Strangled - Brian McGrory [110]
I looked over at the door to the house, which was ajar. I pulled the letter from the scrapbook and placed it in my coat pocket, separate from the pile of materials I was going to take back to Boston.
Quickly, I reloaded the boxes back into the locker and pushed it back into the corner. I headed into the house and told Deirdre I needed to get back to the airport. She had changed from her tank top and miniskirt into a loosely fitting T-shirt and a pair of short shorts — and still looked great, albeit exhausted.
She kissed me on the left cheek and hung on what felt like a moment longer than I had expected. I kissed her cheek in return and again told her how sorry I was about what had happened, and how appreciative I was about her help.
On my way toward the front hall, I felt in my pocket for the small roll of hundred-dollar bills I had brought on the trip. I placed it next to a stack of unopened mail atop an entry table by the door.
I could probably be fired for doing that, but no one would ever know, no one but me and Deirdre Hayes. It seemed like the right thing to do.
I got in the rental car and pulled down Rodeo Road for what I expected would be the final time in my threatened life and had no complaint about this fact. As I turned the corner, my cell phone vibrated in my back pocket. If I thought for a moment that Mongillo’s name would be the biggest surprise of the day, I was about to be proven woefully, frighteningly wrong.
30
Trust.
It’s an interesting concept when you really stop and think about it. In huge swaths of America, it’s the way of the day, ingrained into the culture, the default attitude toward the people and institutions that make up civic life. On the sprawling farms of the heartland, in the village centers where ice cream sodas are still served at lunch counters in the local Rexall, people trust one another. They firmly believe that their neighbors, their friends, their colleagues, their business associates won’t try to slip a curveball past them.
Shopkeepers allow customers to run monthly accounts, rightfully expecting that they’ll always make good. Business deals are sealed on the power of a handshake. Families leave their doors unlocked at night. Little kids ride their bikes alone to the local park.
Of course, there are other huge areas of the country where trust is little more than a relic from a simpler, curious past. Here, people have double locks and police bars. They buy guns not to hunt but to protect. They hire $350-an-hour lawyers to comb through almost every single document that dictates their distrustful lives. Even Ronald Reagan’s famous “Trust but verify” philosophy seems antiquated, because to these people, there shouldn’t be any trust at all.
I’d like to think that my instincts belong with the former group, but my circumstances have thrust me toward the latter. I’d like to think that at my core, in my heart, I’m a trusting person, wanting to believe the words and respect the actions of those around me. But in my more self-aware moments, I know this not to be true. I didn’t get into this bizarre profession of words and news to write day after day that government is basically good, that businesses will always do what’s right, that people, left to their own devices, will always take proper care of one another.
No, in my advancing age, I’m as distrustful at anyone else — which is not to be confused with being untrustworthy. But who knows, maybe I’ve become that as well.
But never do I remember being more distrustful in my entire wary life than I was at that exact moment, driving through the Nevada desert in the direction of McCarran International Airport and a US Airways Boeing 757 that would return me to a place I may not have been ready to go.
I didn’t trust the Boston Police and other various government officials who said that Albert DeSalvo,