When my cell phone rang, I snapped it open so hard I almost snapped it apart. “Flynn here,” I said.
Mongillo was deftly steering my car over the Mystic-Tobin Bridge, the mostly darkened towers of Boston’s Financial District spread out in the near distance below. Huck was snoring in the backseat, oblivious, virtuously so, to all that was wrong in this world.
“Sweeney here.” Hank Sweeney, to be more precise. His voice, as always, was soft, velvety, and welcomed.
“How’s things?” I asked, my pulse slowing for the moment.
“Well, two goons, both newly hired employees of The New York Times, just picked up Elizabeth Riggs, escorted her to the airport, and are getting her out of this crazy town via a company-hired jet. So you should feel good about that.”
“I do.” At least I thought I did. I had to further process the fact that she was gone, though safe, before I could make that same declaration to myself.
“Which frees me up to spend a little more quality time with you,” Sweeney said. He paused, gave me that purring chuckle, and added, “Of course, anytime you and I spend together is quality time.”
“How about we begin anew in about five minutes, in front of the Back Bay post office. I need some help committing a felony — all toward a good cause.”
“Such a coincidence,” Hank replied. “I just happen to be feeling very felonious.” And like that, the line went dead.
Vinny Mongillo glided up to the front of the post office, a hulking brick building that sits on the corner of Stuart and Clarendon Streets in the shadows of the tallest building in Boston, the John Hancock Tower.
I said to him, “You don’t have to do this. You can watch the car, stay with the dog, and I’ll slip in there with Hank.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” he said. “By the end of this night, we’re going to know who killed my mother, one way or another, and I’m going to be front and center in bringing that information home.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that.
Hank was waiting outside, dressed in black, looking like little more than a silhouette. I told the dog to guard the car, though he didn’t so much as open an eye in acknowledgment. As Vinny and I joined Hank outside, my cell phone rang yet again.
“Flynn here.”
“I’m the guy who’s helping you.”
I couldn’t be so sure, especially since the car that at that precise moment was rolling slowly past on Stuart Street bore a striking resemblance to a vehicle parked two spaces behind us at the Pigpen. Thinking even more quickly than usual, I asked, “What did Markowitz tell you to wear plenty of in your last conversation?”
Silence, and then, “Sunscreen. What’s that have to do with breaking into the post office on my watch?”
“Nothing.” And everything, but I didn’t have time to explain. That same car idled about half a block down. I hit Hank on the arm and pointed, and Hank pulled a pair of what looked like opera glasses out of his coat pocket and peered down the street.
“The garage door is rolled up about three feet in the middle loading bay in the back alley. Use that as your entry point. I’m watching the building from a distance. When you’re done, flash the lights of your car once before you illuminate them for good. The overnight managers start coming in around eleven-thirty, so you have to be out in the next ten minutes. When you’re inside the building, keep all lights off at all times.”
And he hung up. I turned to Hank and asked if he brought flashlights.
“Does the pope carry a rosary?” he replied, then handed small lights to Mongillo and me. As I led them around back, Hank said, “What are we doing here? Are you missing your Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes form this year, or is there something larger at stake?”
Mongillo laughed. I didn’t. I told them both, “We’re looking for any envelope addressed to me. We’re probably going to find it in an incoming mail bin that’s yet to be sorted, but who really knows? It was dropped off in one of the front boxes earlier today. I’m just hoping it hasn’t been brought down to the main headquarters for sorting already.”
Neither of them said anything, though I suspect I knew what they were thinking: this was like looking for a hunk of manure from a specific horse on a sprawling farm field. Or something like that. The face of my cell phone read 11:15. I said, “And we’ve got ten minutes to get in and out of the building, no lights allowed.”
Mongillo asked, “Would it be any easier if we were all bound and gagged as well?”
I ignored that, but Hank laughed. Apparently this was anything-goes night on the humor front.
As advertised, the garage door on the middle bay was rolled up about three feet from the bottom, leaving a gap that I slid under easily enough, and Sweeney did with just a little more effort. Mongillo, that’s another story, one that involves some pushing and pulling and a rather uncomfortable moment when I thought we might have to abandon him directly under the door. Once inside, Hank rapped softly on a regular exit next to the garage and said, “Mong, use this on the way out.”
So we were in, the three of us. My cell phone said it was 11:17 p.m., giving us about eight minutes of search time before we had to get out, and another five minutes to alert Peter Martin as to what we’d found.
“Look anywhere and everywhere,” I said, “for anything addressed to me.”
The place was as dark as the Black Forest on a moonless night, though I confess the closest I’ve been to Germany is a slice of German chocolate cake that I had at an absurdly overpriced New American restaurant about six months before.
Suffice it to say, the place was dark — extremely dark, can’t — see — your — hand — in — front — of — your — face dark. It was also moldy and more than a little musty, and it made me understand for the first time why UPS drivers are always so cheerful: because they don’t have to work for the post office.
The three of us fanned out across the first floor of the building — at least I think we did, but I couldn’t see them very well. A moment later, I did see a couple of slices of penetrating light from their flashlights, and I illuminated mine as well.
The place was lined with various canvas pushcarts. Little warrens were separated from one another by mesh netting. There were stacks of envelopes and piles of boxes stuffed in every possible crevice. It made it seem all the more extraordinary that a letter could be delivered to the most remote outposts in America in just a few days.
I quite literally stumbled across a row of those aforementioned pushcarts, each of them identified by zip code. I shone my light on the various labels until I found my code on the waterfront, and I reached into the deep basket and pulled out a fistful of envelopes.
I quickly shuffled through them with one hand, shining the light on them with the other, dropping each envelope back into the cart after I had scanned it. I got to the end without finding anything with my name.
So I went to the cart that bore the Record’s zip code, only I found hundreds more letters. I called out in a loud whisper, “Guys, over here, I could use some help,” and I flicked my light around the room. In a moment they were both by my side, and the three of us divvied up the contents of the basket. I was fairly sure we’d find it there.
We didn’t.
I checked the face of my phone — 11:21. Sweeney said, “Follow me, I found a bunch of white boxes with postmarked mail. I’ll bet it’s in there.”
Mongillo and I followed Sweeney across the cluttered floor, stumbling more than a couple of times but ultimately arriving safely. I should have taken Hank’s bet, though, because after we divvied up about six hundred envelopes and shuffled through them, we didn’t even find so much as a phone bill bearing my name.
Now it was 11:23, time to give up. Mac Foley would be toast in the morning Record, in a story under my byline. I briefly tried to convince myself that he deserved it, but both my conscience and my gut told me otherwise.
My hands, by the way, were starting to cramp, probably from lack of food, lack of water, lack of sleep, lack of sex, lack of joy, lack of humanity, lack of virtually anything that normal people have plenty of in their refined and enjoyable lives.
That’s what I was feeling — self-pity — when the first gunshot rang out, the report slamming off the concrete floors and walls and ringing in my ears. I’ll repeat that: a gunshot. A real live honest-to-goodness gunshot, right there in the Back Bay U.S. Postal Service Annex in the dark of a crucial night. When I thought about it for any more than a fraction of a second, it started to make perfect sense, because that’s just plain and simple what happens in the increasingly absurd life of intrepid reporter Jack Flynn.
It’s what I heard after the gunshot that really frightened me. A crash, very near me, as if someone crumpled to the floor not from the sound of the shot but from the impact. I dove for cover, then crawled furiously toward the sounds of despair, which now also included a voice muttering, “Fuck. He got me.” It was, for the record, Vinny Mongillo’s voice.
I extinguished my light so I wouldn’t be a sitting duck, or in this case, reporter. I crawled headfirst into a metal desk, then a tall trash can, grabbing the former before it tipped to the floor. In about twenty seconds, I felt the form of Mongillo lying on his back between a desk chair and a canvas bin.
“Vinny, it’s Jack,” I whispered.
“The fuckers got me,” he said. His voice was more angry than panicked, especially when he added, “Right in my stomach.”
I flicked on the light and circled both my palms around it as I shone the bulb onto Mongillo’s vast abdominal area, which was not unlike trying to hit the continent of Asia with a dart. I didn’t see any bullet hole in his plaid shirt. I didn’t even see any blood. I whispered, “Show me where it hurts,” and he took his big, beefy hand and drew little circles in the air above the right side of his lower stomach.
I shone the light and saw the truth: he was grazed with a bullet that might have cost him an old shirt and a little bit of skin, but it hadn’t penetrated any flesh, or for that matter caused any lasting damage, at least not of the physical kind.
I whispered, “Vin, I think the bullet skimmed your gut. You’ve got nothing worse than a scrape.”
He replied, “Oh, God, man, anywhere but my stomach. Don’t take away the one true pleasure I still have.”
I don’t think he was talking about sex.
I shut my light off and told Vin to stay down and keep his light off as well. I set off across the room in search of that which I didn’t yet know. I stole another glance at my cell phone: 11:25 p.m. We were about to be late.
Hank Sweeney, it’s important to note, had virtually disappeared. Last I saw of his light was a full minute earlier, before the shot was fired, when he was futilely searching the last envelopes in the postmarked bin. As I crawled along the gritty floor, my heart was heavy with failure. All my soaring optimism coming in was seeping out. I was pretty resigned that my new goal wasn’t finding the letter, which would have been the proof I needed for a story I hadn’t written. Rather, it was simply the three of us getting out of there alive.
And then came the crash. It was surprisingly close to me, a few yards ahead, a fierce, sharp collision, as if something had just been flung across the room. Immediately afterward, a gun discharged. It was so close that I could see the flash of light from the muzzle. I could smell the explosion. Then silence. I was flat on the floor, holding my breath to mute any sounds.
About twenty seconds later, I heard commotion about ten yards away, a strange voice yelling some indecipherable words, and then another gunshot, followed by a scream of agony. Out of the mayhem, Hank’s voice cut through the darkness. “Hit the lights,” he yelled.
I bolted for the door, the narrow band of my flashlight illuminating the way. I stumbled across one cluster of boxes, and then another. When I got to the wall, I felt frantically around for a switch, found several, and flicked them all upward. Immediately, the room was bathed in harsh light, revealing Hank Sweeney kneeling atop a middle-aged man sprawled haphazardly on the ground, his head pushed against some empty boxes, his left thigh oozing blood.
Hank looked hard at the guy and said, “Wait a minute, I know you.” He still had that smooth voice, though his next motion didn’t seem quite so calm. He raised his fist and cracked it down on the guy’s nose, causing a veritable explosion of blood. The man was actually reduced to tears as Hank called out, “Let’s go.”
Vinny Mongillo was already up and about, seemingly recovered from his close call. The three of us got to the back door in unison. Hank flicked the lights back off and we all filed outside. My cell phone said 11:27.
On the loading dock, I asked, “Who was that?”
Hank replied, “Goddamned police captain, one of the commissioner’s top yes-men. Maybe I should say henchmen. Seems like the commish has been going to extremes to block your story.”
As I let that little shard of information sink in, Mongillo asked, “No luck with the letter?”
I shook my head. Hank said, “We’ve got to give it up.” He pointed to a car turning from Clarendon Street into the alley and added, “The writing’s on the wall. We’ve got to get out of here.”
The writing’s on the wall.
This jarred something deep inside my head, or maybe it wasn’t that deep. Maybe it was something that had been precariously floating along the surface of my mind, something I couldn’t quite piece together.
All truths are easier to understand once they are discovered.
That was Paul Vasco, in his miserable little room on that miserable Friday that Edgar Sullivan died at the hands of a gunman in the Beacon Hill CVS, and I was just now starting to sense what Vasco meant.
You want to get it in writing, young man. That’s the best advice I can give you.
That gem, courtesy of the famous H. Gordon Thomas, pretty much summarized what I had been trying to do right here. But it occurred to me that I had the wrong execution of the right idea. It was as if I had just heard a clap of thunder in my brain.
I turned to Hank and all but yelled, “What’s the zip code of police headquarters?”
The car was pulling down the alley now, into a space in front of the bay.
Hank told me.
“Hold this person off,” I called out as I slipped back under the garage door.
I could hear Hank hissing, “Wait,” as I groped my way farther inside.
Once in, I flicked on my penlight, got myself to the row of canvas baskets, and found the one marked with the zip code at police headquarters. There were about a hundred envelopes inside, and I furiously picked up a stack and sorted through them, throwing the ones that I didn’t need onto the floor. No luck.
So I scooped out another stack. I couldn’t hear anyone at the door. I couldn’t hear anything at all but my own heavy breathing. And that breathing got a whole lot heavier when I came upon a plain white envelope with “Detective Mac Foley” typed in a familiar font. I tossed the rest of the mail back in the carrier and set out for the door.
I slammed into a desk, stopped for a moment to get my bearings, and shone my light across the room to determine an easy flow to the door.
Click.
That sound, though, stopped me cold. It occurred right in front of me, in an open area of the room unencumbered by furniture or tall baskets. I shone my light onto the floor, and about ten feet away, in my path toward freedom and what I strongly suspected was a magnificent story that no one else would ever have, that middle-aged man with the bloody thigh was aiming a handgun directly at the bridge of my handsome nose.
“Drop it,” I said. I had no authority to command this. Well, maybe moral authority, but not a whole lot else. I had no weapon. I had no easy hiding place. I didn’t even have the power of persuasion, because by the time I’d use it, I think I’d already be dead.
The man, dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, was trembling as he held the trigger up around his eyes and took aim at my face. I had watched Hank Sweeney grab the guy’s gun, but apparently, like the perpetrator in the CVS, he was hiding another. Actually, I shone my light on his face and realized he was the same attacker as in CVS, a thought that didn’t exactly thrill me because it meant he had no compunction about killing.
“You don’t want to do that,” I said.
I said this mostly to buy time, to play out my options, to give Hank or Mongillo or the postal inspector or the Easter Bunny time to walk inside this goddamned dank post office and shoot this nutcase in the back of the head. Problem was, I didn’t see any of the above — and didn’t hear them, either.
The gunman, by the way, didn’t reply to my assertion. He just kept pointing, trying to get his bearings, shaking all the while.
I said, “I can help you with that wound. I can drive you to the hospital, drop you off at the emergency room, get you taken care of, and no one will ever know why you or I were here.”
Again, nothing.
I shone my light more directly on him, and noticed what his hesitance was in shooting me. He was slowly gathering his body, arduously lifting it upward against the pain of his own wound. He was obviously trying to position himself to be able to flee once the gunshot rocketed through the room and I lay dead on the floor. Sweat was pouring down his face as he tried to move, hampering his vision.
“Get that fucking light down,” he said, his Boston accent thick, his voice craggy and tough.
I pushed the light off to the side, and in the process saw the glint of a metal object on the desk that I had just slammed into. It was a letter opener, long and sharp, just sitting there for the taking.
So here’s what happened next. I sized up the gunman’s position, and then mine. I flicked my flashlight off, leapt over the desk, grabbed the handle of the letter opener, and flung it directly into his temple, kung-fu style, killing him instantly.
Well, all right, that’s what I was trying to do, anyway. Would have been good, even if I wasn’t.
Here’s what actually happened. I flicked off my flashlight. The split second I did that, he began firing, the bullets passing so close to my face and shoulders that I could hear them scream past in the air.
I dove for cover, paused for about ten seconds, picked a basket filled with mail up off the floor, and heaved it in his direction — one, then another after that, and still another. After the third one, the gunman groaned in agony. Suddenly the lights sprung to life in the room. Sweeney raced toward us with his weapon drawn. The perpetrator lay on the ground, still as a statue, his gun just out of reach of his hand. Sweeney approached frantically, kicked the gun farther away, lifted the guy’s head off the concrete, and announced, “He’s out cold. You must have hit him in the head with this basket.”
Brings new meaning to the USPS motto of “We deliver for you.”
“I’ve got to run, Hank.”
“So do I,” he said.
We bolted for the door. Outside, Mongillo was talking to a pair of postal workers like they were relatives. Actually, as we were leaving, one of them called out, “I promise, cousin, nothing but silence.”
At my car, I flipped open the driver’s door and climbed in beside a sleeping dog named Huck, who had crawled into the passenger seat. I flicked on the dome light, calmed my nerves for a second, gently opened the envelope that I had risked my life to get, and held its contents in my sweating hands.
I unfolded a single sheet of paper and bore down with my eyes to read it.
“Back again,” it said. “Still more to follow.”
On a separate line were the words “The Phantom Fiend.”
It was written in that same typeface as the notes I had received at the Record. In my other hand I was holding something else, something that it literally hurt me to my core to feel: the driver’s license of a thirty-four-year-old woman named Jennifer Cooper who was listed at an address on Commonwealth Avenue.
Jennifer Cooper, I said to myself, rest in peace.
I snapped open my phone, saw it was 11:35, and hit the speed-dial button for Peter Martin. He picked up on the first ring.
“Peter, you’ve got to kill the Foley story,” I yelled. “You’ve got to kill it now. It’s wrong. I’ve got the facts right here in my hand. I can write another story identifying the Phantom Fiend.”
“Who is it?” Martin asked.
“Paul Vasco. He’s definitely the killer now, I’m betting he was the killer then. I’ve got it good enough to go with.”
“You’re telling me that with all we have on Mac Foley, that he’s not guilty?”
“Peter, he’s guilty,” I replied. “He’s guilty as hell. He’s just not guilty of murder.”
Martin said, “I don’t know what the hell you mean, but I trust that you’ll make it clear in print. Now get in here and do your job.”
Mongillo was still standing on the curb with Sweeney when I threw the car into drive. It was the first time in a week that I was about to write something that I really wanted to say.