Strangled - Brian McGrory [137]
I knocked again, and in turn heard someone moving around inside — the sound of a door shutting, unsteady footsteps, something dropping on the floor. And then the front door slowly opened, revealing a figure I had seen dozens if not hundreds of times in newspaper photographs and on television news clips.
In some respects, H. Gordon Thomas looked very much how I would have imagined — big and barrel-chested, with crystal-clear blue eyes peering through his trademark enormous, owlish eyeglasses. He must have stood six feet four, must have weighed 240 pounds, all of which belied his age, which must have been at least seventy, and probably a few years beyond that.
In other respects, he looked like his bedraggled brother, if he had one, which I’m not sure he did, but this is no time to get lost in needless detail. His long hair was scraggly, rather than slicked back in that polished way it used to be. He appeared unsteady on his feet. The buttons on his cardigan sweater were adhered to the wrong holes, and the shirt beneath it was untucked. His face, that famous face that juries used to trust so much, carried what must have been three days’ worth of growth.
“Do I know you?” he asked. Not “Can I help you?” Not “Who are you?” But “Do I know you?” delivered slowly, in that famously deep voice of his that still made it seem he was performing before a judge and jury.
“I don’t think so, sir,” I responded. “My name is Jack Flynn. I’m a reporter for the Boston Record. I was hoping to get a word with you, if you had the time.”
He continued to look at me, his gaze as penetrating as the sand and the wind that still cut at my body and face. He said, more quietly this time, “The one in communication with the Boston Strangler.” It was an interesting choice of words — the Boston Strangler rather than the Phantom Fiend — given that he was Albert DeSalvo’s lawyer many years ago and had engineered his client’s confession to the stranglings.
“Yes, sir,” I replied softly.
“Come in,” he said as he quickly looked around the environs of his cottage, perhaps measuring its suitability for visitors. By the time he might have decided it wasn’t, I was already in, so he cleared a stack of legal books from an extremely old and worn couch, pounded the cushion once, and said, “Why don’t you sit here, young man.” So I did.
The cottage was as threadbare inside as it was rickety outside, with just the couch I was on and a mismatched chair on which Thomas sat. Both of them were kitty-corner to a small brick fireplace, which at the moment held the last remnants of a sputtering fire. The carpet was gray, thin, stained, and old. The walls were made of cheap paneling. The ceiling had exposed beams, though not in the stylish way of an expensive downtown loft. The kitchen was nothing more than a sink, an ancient stove, and a small refrigerator pushed against a back wall. Above them, a window looking out at the churning ocean was caked in bird feces that was, in turn, covered with sand. All in all, this wasn’t exactly a visit to the Naples Ritz-Carlton.
Thomas got up and tossed another log on the fire, saying, “I should have gotten this damned place winterized, but every summer I keep telling myself, ‘This is my last year here,’ so I never have.”
He turned the volume down on the small television set that sat atop a folding table. The TV was turned to CNN. He settled heavily back in his chair in the way that old men do who carry too much weight on their tired frames.
I stayed silent. I noticed for the first time an expensive-looking bottle of single-malt Scotch sitting on an upside-down cardboard box next to his chair, and beside the bottle was a half-full crystal tumbler that was completely incongruous with the rest of the room. It was as if he carried the glass and the Scotch from his prior life, and for all I knew, perhaps he had.
He focused on me anew and said, “So you’ve found yourself in quite a maelstrom, young man. You’re undoubtedly a very busy guy. To what