Strangled - Brian McGrory [135]
“Finally, some sense,” I replied, then added, “I’ll call you shortly.”
I hung up just in time to witness Hal Harrison slamming down the phone — on the mayor.
He stared straight down at his desk for a long moment, his hands on either side of his broad head. I took a seat again in front of him. He slowly looked up at me, his eyes darker than they were before, the wrinkles of his face deeper, and he said, “You’re fucking with the wrong guy, Jack.”
He said “Jack” like it was also a profanity, the word propelled from his lips like an arrow.
I said, “Excuse me?”
He stared at me, his eyes as black and distant and angry as any I’ve ever seen. A police commissioner is used to getting his or her own way, especially when the mayor is a weak one with plans to step down.
He said, “You’re fucking with this investigation. You’re fucking with this city. You’re fucking with this commissioner.”
He paused and looked at me. It seemed like he was almost looking through me. He said, his tone as flat as the line on a dead man’s cardiogram, “And if you put the contents of that bullshit note in the paper, you’re going to pay.”
I said, “We’re going to do what we have to do, with our readers, not you, in mind.”
“Bullshit!” he screamed. “Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. He admitted it. He confessed to every one of the crimes in minute detail. And now some joker comes along forty years later in the middle of my mayoral campaign, claiming to be the real Strangler, and you and your whole paper fall for it!”
His voice was bouncing off the walls and windows of his cavernous office and rising toward the high ceilings. Without warning, he picked up a binder that said “Strangler Investigation” from the top of his desk and flung it sidearm across the room. It slammed against the far wall, knocking a bronze plaque to the floor — undoubtedly a commendation of some sort. Somewhere in that act there was symbolism, but it would take a much smarter man than me to be able to say what it was.
“You’re messing with my future, Jack.” He was standing up now, hunched over his desk, his voice lower but no less intense. “You’re messing with every dream I’ve ever had. You’re messing with what’s rightfully mine. You’re digging up the past, and trying to bury me in the fucking hole. And you’re wrong. You’re just fucking wrong.”
I stood up as well, partly in anticipation that he might come over the desk at me, partly because I realized that I wasn’t going to get any more than I needed out of him, so this interview was just about done.
“Sorry you feel this way, Commissioner, but I’m going to keep doing my job as you go ahead and do yours.”
I began to turn around and head toward the door. When I took a couple of strides, he said in a voice that was at once soft and hard as steel, “You better watch yourself.”
I turned around and replied, “What did you just say to me?”
“You heard me. You better watch yourself. You think some funny things have already happened? Your friend gets blown away in a CVS? Your life gets threatened?”
He caught himself here, took a long swallow followed by a deep breath, and said, “Like I said, watch yourself. You run that note, be on your guard.”
I stood near the door, staring at him, incredulous over being threatened by the commissioner of the Boston Police Department, and reasonably certain that his threat included an admission that he was behind the prior attempts on my life. Edgar Sullivan’s kind face popped momentarily into my mind.
As I stared, trembling not out of fear but fury, he seemed to understand what he had just said, what he had just done, the import and gravity of it all. He said in a much different tone of voice, conciliatory, yet edging toward desperation, “What can I do to stop you, Jack? What can I do?”
“Do what you’re paid to do. Be a