Strangled - Brian McGrory [93]
The two of us walked down the stairs in silence and out into the midday sun.
Mongillo grabbed the keys when I pulled them out and said, “I’m driving. You’re out of control.” I didn’t argue. Inside the car, he said, “I’m trying to be like the reporters in All the President’s Men. My partner here thinks he’s the star of Rocky.”
He started the car and pulled out. I could feel the tension seeping out of my pores, not all of it, but enough for me to take a deep breath and say, “Sorry about that. I don’t know what just happened. This thing’s getting to me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, in a tone far more distant and aloof than his norm, staring straight ahead at the road. Then he added, “It’s getting to me, too. We’re going to have to do something about it.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but wasn’t of the mind to ask.
We both sat in silence for a while. We were crossing the bridge back into Boston when he said, “Until then, rather than try to kick the shit out of everyone, I think I’ve got another plan.”
26
There were definitely days in my life that had gone better. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of many, outside of the obvious, that had gone any worse.
It had started out with another communication from the Phantom Fiend, in this case, an order to publish a letter to the people of Boston on the front page of the Record. That was quickly followed by a decision by the Record publisher not to publish the letter because said publisher, hitherto a respected newswoman, didn’t want to tick off the acting mayor and the commissioner of police. This failure would mean that the Phantom would ratchet up his killing spree because I couldn’t convince my paper to take action. On top of this, I lose my temper with the guy who probably was and probably still is the Boston Strangler or Phantom Fiend or whatever he should be called.
And all this followed the death of Bob Walters — a death that occurred before he could get me the information he said he had. And that, of course, followed the death of Joshua Carpenter, the innocent guy in the Public Garden. And of course, there were the stranglings of three young women in various parts of town.
I bring this up to explain why I was in the gymnasium of the University Club at four in the afternoon on what could have and should have been a critical day of reporting and writing at the Boston Record. Mongillo, in his inimitable way, told me, and I quote, “Go get some sleep, some sex, or some exercise, before you ruin this entire story.”
The first presented option, I was too antsy for. The second, I had few possibilities and even less desire. The third, well, I could use a tour through the gym, so that’s where I went.
The place was barren, given the hour. The lunch crowd was long gone, and the evening crowd wouldn’t arrive for another hour, so I sat on an exercise ball and knocked out seventy-five crunches, feeling my abdominal muscles tighten more with each successive one. I worked the lat machine and the bench press, and did some flies. I skipped a little rope. I did more abdominals. I struggled through the shoulder press.
The work felt good. The sweat that opened up on my forehead and flowed down my face felt even better. The stereo system was turned down, and the only sounds in the gym were the plates of weight clinking against one another and my own labored breathing, all of which gave me a little time to think.
I thought of the call I had yet to return to Maggie Kane. I decided we weren’t engaged anymore; that designation expired one way or another with the