Back Bay (47 page)

“Alone, this picture means nothing,” Ferguson explained. “You happened to be in a bar fight with your brother when somebody came in and shot the bartender. However…”

He opened the second photo. It showed the mourners leaving Christopher Carrington’s funeral. Fallon remembered the scene. He had been trying to get to Evangeline before she drove off.

“Here you are at the funeral of another murder victim, and this one is a Pratt. Now, I take notice.”

“My brother was a suicide,” said Evangeline angrily.

“Believe that if you want to,” said Ferguson. “The police do. But that tea set is a very valuable item. In today’s market, it’s worth two and a half, maybe three million. As a tool for blackmail against Hannaford and his financial backers, it’s worth a lot more. There are people out there ready to kill for it, either to find it or to keep it hidden right where it is.”

“Are you saying that somebody killed Carrington and Kenny Gallagher because of the Golden Eagle Tea Set?” Fallon was beginning to wonder where Ferguson got his information.

“Carrington most certainly. Gallagher, he’s a coincidence. But people have been killed because somebody thought they had
information. And you may be killed because you do have information. How much do you know?”

Now we’re down to it, thought Fallon. We’ve finished with the friendly chatter. Ferguson suddenly seemed very dangerous.

“All I know is what I read in the newspapers,” said Fallon with a weak smile.

“Not funny.” The anger flared in Ferguson’s voice, and Fallon decided not to antagonize him again. “When I’m paying for the drinks, I like smart conversation. No bad jokes. Now what do you know about the Golden Eagle?”

No wonder he’d been such a good reporter, thought Fallon. With his huge head, wide-set eyes, and shaggy mane, Ferguson looked like something that ought to be leaving mysterious footprints in the Himalayas.

Fallon decided that whatever he knew, everybody else knew more, so he told Ferguson everything.

When he finished, Ferguson frowned. “That’s it?”

Fallon nodded.

“Well, I’ll tell you right now that the story the Pratts told you this morning is bullshit. There’s no syndicate blackmailing anybody. There’s some serious blackmail goin’ on, but it’s all nice and cozy. Right in the family.”

“They told me Harrison worked for the FBI.”

“My ass! He works for Soames. From what I’ve heard, Harrison and the little creep, Dill, have been on the Pratt payroll for years. Company security, industrial spying, that sort of thing. The other one, Buckley, is new. He’s just a leg-breaker.”

“I don’t know anything about Buckley and Dill.”

“Look around, and one of them will usually be behind you.”

“How do you know so much?” asked Evangeline, a bit harshly.

He glared at her. He considered the question an insult. “I been on this thing longer than anybody. For years. I might be big and ugly, but when I worked, I learned how to make myself invisible and find out what I had to know. You just take my word that what I’m tellin’ you is fact.”

Evangeline looked at Fallon. They both realized that this was a volatile derelict.

Ferguson turned to Fallon.

“Now, you must know more. What about the famous Renaissance poet and laugh-a-minute gagman for Christ, John Milton?”

Fallon recalled that there was an inscription from
Paradise Lost
on Horace Pratt’s tombstone.

“And what did it say?”

“I can’t remember.”

“You go back and look at it and see if it don’t tell you something.”

“What?” asked Evangeline impatiently.

“I’ll leave it to you to figure. But I’ll show you what I mean. You got a piece of paper and a pencil?”

Evangeline gave him her telephone notebook.

He carefully wrote down seven lines and handed her the paper. “What do you see there?”

Evangeline read the lines. “O friends, I hear the tread of nimble feet/Hasting this way, and now by glimpse discern/Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade,/And with them comes a third of regal port,/But faded splendour wan; who by his gait/And fierce demeanor seems the Prince of Hell,/Not likely to part hence without contest;/Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours.’ What’s this supposed to mean?”

“Don’t take any shit from the devil. That’s the Archangel Gabriel talking. He’s also giving us a clue.”

Fallon looked at Evangeline. “This is what Abigail was talking about in her diary.”

“You’ve read the diaries?” asked Ferguson excitedly.

“Only one of them. But in it she talks about giving her nephews clues to the location of her family secret.”

Ferguson nodded. “There were two sets. Old Man Pratt made up the first bunch. And after they filled in the Back Bay, his daughter made up a second set. They both had a thing for
Paradise Lost
. Most of the quotes have some moral point to them, but someplace in every one, there’s a clue. It might be a number, a direction on the compass. It might be just a word, or it might be the whole idea of the quotation.”

“The context,” offered Fallon.

Ferguson smiled. “Right. It’s easy to see you went to Harvard. Now, with these quotes, you sometimes have to know a little
about Boston geography or the treasure itself to know what they’re talkin’ about. But usually, you can just figure them out by lookin’ at them.”

“What are we supposed to figure out with this one?” asked Evangeline. “The quotation mentions shade. Are we supposed to look under a tree?”

This time, the sarcasm made Ferguson laugh. “The lady’s a skeptic. I can understand that. Until somebody finds the tea set, we’re all skeptics. There are specific references in this quotation to a number and a unit of measure. Until we have all the quotations, we can’t be certain if she wants us to read ‘the tread of nimble feet’ or ‘a third of regal part’ as the clue.”

“This is hard to believe,” said Evangeline softly.

“Tell that to old Abigail Pratt Bentley. The one who finds all the clues pinpoints the exact spot where the tea set is buried, right down to how deep it’s sunk. I have five clues. I been trackin’ them down for years, and I got a few I don’t guess anybody else has. I even rode the rails out to California and got one from a woman named Mary Korbel, just before she died. That was three years ago. You’ll find clues on headstones, samplers, in safety-deposit boxes, and God knows where else.”

“This morning,” said Fallon, “Lawrence Hannaford told us that the tea set was found by scavengers when the Back Bay was being filled in the 1860s, and it was sold in England, where he bought it. How do you know he isn’t telling the truth?” It was a reasonable question, not at all hostile, but Jack C. Ferguson didn’t like it.

He rose angrily. “Because I been around, kid. I know Bill Rulick better than anybody. And you can take my word for it—the tea set in the museum is a fake. Until I find the real one, nobody’s gonna believe me. Not you, not anybody. But when I find it, they’ll all say I wasn’t such a dumb sot after all. And not a bad reporter, either. If anybody asks me to work for ’em, I’ll thumb my nose, because I’ll be rich. I’ll be somebody. Just so long as nobody kills me first.”

“Who is going to kill you?” asked Evangeline, hoping the concern in her voice would settle him.

“Rulick. Rule. Whatever the hell he calls himself now. If somebody finds the tea set, he’s a fraud, because he’s the guy who supposedly put Hannaford together with that English owner nobody’s
ever been able to find. If Rulick is shown up, his pile of stock and Pratt Industries proxies won’t mean jack shit. He’ll never take over Pratt Industries, and he wants that more than a sixteen-year-old wants pussy.”

“He has the votes to win a proxy fight, but my family is trying to stop him by producing the real tea set?” asked Evangeline.

Ferguson sat and poured himself more champagne. “You catch on. Once the Pratts have the tea set, they can threaten him with it. If he don’t back out of the proxy fight, they tell the world they’ve found the real tea set and hope the stockholders decide to dump Rule. It might work. It might not.”

“Why not go to the Pratts and make a deal?” asked Fallon.

“Because the Pratts are assholes. They’ll deal with Rulick, and if he backs out, they’ll deep-six the tea set. They’ll promise that if he quits the proxy fight, they’ll never reveal the fraud. Since they’re Boston gentlemen and Hannaford’s in the family, they’ll keep their word. I want to see the tea set and feel the money. I got nothing to do with the Pratts.”

“Why come to us?”

“Because you’re independent.” He looked at Evangeline. “And from what I can tell, you’re just taggin’ along with him.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“You two can help me, and I can help you. Just find your grandmother, wherever she is, and explain everything to her. She’s got six or seven clues in her head, and they’re the ones I don’t have. We put ’em all together, and we’ll be damn close to havin’ a tea set.”

“How do you know my grandmother?” asked Evangeline.

“Like I said, I been around.”

“Why should she help us and not one of her nephews?”

“
We
didn’t lock her up just to keep her out of the way. You find her, and I’ll find you in a few days.”

He picked up the bottle of champagne and gestured toward the Back Bay. “There’s a tea set out there someplace. You take my word.” He gulped the last of the champagne, strode across the roof, and stepped onto the fire escape. “I’ll find my way out.”

Fallon ran to the side of the building, just above the fire escape. “You can’t take off yet. We haven’t finished.”

“I have.” The iron cage creaked and groaned under his weight. His steps echoed through it.

“You still haven’t told me where you got your information,” said Fallon frantically.

“I’ll tell you more when you tell me more.”

“Wait.” Fallon stepped onto the escape. He couldn’t let Ferguson go.

“Don’t follow me, sonny.” A metallic snap, and six inches of steel caught the light from the street lamp. “I don’t trust too many people, and until I know you better, I don’t trust you. Don’t follow.”

Fallon stayed where he was. Ferguson climbed all the way down and disappeared into the darkness of the alley behind Evangeline’s townhouse.

Evangeline stood beside Fallon and looked down into the alley. “What the hell was that?”

February 1933

O
n Saturday mornings, Sadie Ferguson rose early. She cooked breakfast for her mother, her brother, and her three children. She cleaned the house. Then she baked: four loaves of white bread to last the week, biscuits for Sunday breakfast, brown bread to go with baked beans on Saturday night, and two loaves of Irish soda bread for Sunday-afternoon guests.

After the bread went into the oven, she locked the front door, went up to the attic bedroom, and pulled the gallon can from under little Jack’s bed. Back in the kitchen, she took out a funnel and a sack containing thirty-two pint bottles, which she bought from the junkman at a half a cent each. She carefully placed the
funnel in the neck of a bottle and filled it with 150-proof grain alcohol, known to her supplier as liquid death. She added water, capped the bottle, and shook it, but not too much, because she was never quite sure if the mixture would explode. When all thirty-two bottles were filled, she poked her head into the freezing February morning and called for Jackie.

The Fergusons lived in the South End, on Decatur Street, a few blocks south of Dover and Washington. A tough neighborhood, and getting tougher now that the Depression covered it like a blanket of dirty snow. The buildings, mostly red-brick bowfronts, had been single-family homes once, but not for long. The upper class had moved to the Back Bay instead, the middle class to the outlying towns. Most of the buildings on Ferguson’s block were rooming houses or tenement apartments where immigrant families were always making room for new arrivals. Every fifteen minutes, the elevated train clattered past the end of the street. Kids and dogs hunted rats for sport in the cellars. And outside of the Friday-night basketball game and dance at Cathedral High School, the most popular gathering spot was the Sunday-morning crap game in an alley off Dover Street.

But Sadie Ferguson liked the South End, in spite of the rummies and the rats and the black district a few blocks away. Neighbors still watched out for each other. People were still friendly. The Cathedral was close by. And everyone knew the cop on the beat. The South End was the only home Sadie Ferguson had ever known and the only place in Boston where her whole family could live together and still have room to breathe. Their walk-up was one of the nicer homes on the row, a dowdy old matron whose beauty was gone but who still looked attractive.

Sadie called for Jackie, but a light snow had begun to fall and it muffled the sound. Sadie was a big, beefy woman, but her voice didn’t fit her. Built like a tuba, she sounded like a woodwind. She called again. No Jackie. She wondered if he was off stealing coal. She didn’t encourage it, but extra coal was always welcome. She called once more. This time, her shrill voice attracted three dogs before Jackie came running out of an alley.

“Jack C. Ferguson, how many times have I told you to stay near
the house on Saturday mornings? You have chores to do. You can raise Cain in the afternoon.”

“Yes, Mama.” Jackie knew never to argue with his mother, especially on Saturday mornings, when the smell of the fresh bread filled the house. He was twelve years old and big for his age, with a high forehead and wide-set eyes that his mother always said were the sign of intelligence. A tough kid, like the neighborhood, but likable and friendly nonetheless.

Sadie put two pint bottles into his outer pockets and four into the pockets she had sewn inside his coat. Jackie went on his first run and came back half an hour later with six dollars. She loaded him up again and he was off. Jackie made two trips on Saturdays. Sadie sold the rest of the booze from the back door.

It was snowing harder now, but Jackie didn’t mind. In bad weather, tips were always good. He wrapped his scarf around his neck, pulled his hat low over his ears, and started to run. He galloped down an alley that led to Gloucester Place, past the old Italian fishman pushing his cart from house to house, through the gauntlet of Gloucester Place punks who peppered him with snowballs as he crossed their turf, then on to the Madison Hotel, a decrepit rooming house at the end of the street. He had a stop there, but he always saved it for last. He ran through the walkway under the Madison, a dark tunnel that smelled of piss even in the winter, and he came out on Washington Street. A train screeched on the El above him; it sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping a giant blackboard. He put his hands to his ears and kept running. He dodged a Model A that skidded to avoid him as he crossed the street, and he made his first stop in an old house behind the German Church.