The Son of John Devlin (30 page)

“And so you tried to work out an arrangement with this particular person, Mr. Alvarez.”

Moloney emitted a harsh laugh. “Well, it was an unstated arrangement. I mean, to be honest, we just try and scare the shit out of him and hope he remembers that next time.”

Duffy nodded. “And then you left the apartment building at 322 Arborway?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened next?”

“As soon as we got outside we were confronted by Devlin and Del Rio.”

“And?”

“They asked what had happened, and we said it was a dry hole.”

“Now, Detective Moloney, at some point did Detective Devlin ask whether you had removed cash from the scene?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your reply?”

“I wanted to steer clear of that because I didn’t know what was up, and I thought maybe he was looking to rip it off or whatever, and so I hesitated and then I made up some bullshit story about having won it in a poker game.”

“And why did you do that?”

“Because Del Rio was there and I didn’t want to … I didn’t know what was up.”

“And so what happened next?”

“We rode downtown and they interviewed us about
this case and a few others and made accusations and whatnot.”

“And what is your situation at the moment, Detective?”

“Administrative leave,” Moloney said. “They’re trying to kick me off the force.” He paused for a long moment. “And they’ll probably succeed.” Moloney said this in a tone of defeat. He suddenly appeared a beaten man.

Duffy was surprised. “Why do you say that, Detective?”

Moloney shrugged. “Because they need a scapegoat. What was it someone said? They need to lance the boil. And once they do that, then all the pressure is off. But they need to do that every now and again, and it’s time again. It’s time now.”

Coakley stood on the fish pier, the wind whipping off the water. He spotted Young pulling up in a smart-looking Acura coupe. Young, without an overcoat, came charging along the pier.

“What was so urgent?” he asked.

“Sorry to trouble you, Doc,” Coakley said. “But I’ve got some bad news for you.”

Young’s eyes widened.

“Or, maybe it’s really good news disguised as bad,” Coakley said. “Yeah, that’s what it is. In truth.”

“What is it?” Young asked, clearly concerned.

“You’re out of the deal, Doc,” Coakley said.

Coakley could see that Young was strung out, his eyes round and dull. He was stunned. “What?” he said, spittle coming from his mouth. “This is my deal.”

“This
was
your deal,” Coakley said. “Now it’s somebody else’s deal.”

“That’s bullshit,” Young said. “I developed the distribution channels, I did the sales.”

Coakley frowned. “Let’s not get carried away, Doc,” he said. “You went to distributors whose names I gave you, people who would have a predisposition to become involved. You took a risk and you didn’t win. You didn’t lose, either. And that’s important to recognize. It would have been nice to have the dough. But you’ll have to figure something else out.”

Coakley knew Young would have little if any recourse. He had screwed up his life and seen a drug deal as the one-time answer to his prayers. He’d been wrong. It wasn’t to work out for him. But as Coakley stood on the pier looking out at a Virgin Atlantic jet glide in toward Logan, he felt a sense of comfort that he was doing something useful, something decent. Young had gone bad, and Coakley did not know what would ultimately become of him, whether he would straighten himself out somehow or destroy himself. That would be up to Young. But by driving him from the deal, Coakley believed he was helping to improve Young’s chances for rehab. For Coakley believed there was nothing worse than a junkie who believed that dealing was his answer.

“But this deal—” Young said.

“This deal is over for you,” Coakley said firmly. He moved closer to Young. “And be glad it is, Doc.”

Young straightened up, making an effort to compose himself. “I’m going through with it,” he said, a touch too arrogantly.

Coakley laughed out loud. “Good, then tell me, where are you picking up the goods? Who’s making the delivery? When and where?”

Young was mute. That information was to have come from Coakley, information controlled by Coakley and
Devlin. Young would never know the truth, never know that the deal had been manipulated, information passed, so members of the Boston Police Department had moved into it, taken it over as their own.

“What religion are you?” Coakley suddenly asked Young.

“Episcopalian,” Young replied.

“My advice to you is to get in your Acura and drive immediately to the nearest Episcopalian church and get down on your knees and thank God you’re out of this deal,” Coakley said. “Because if you were to go ahead, you would either be arrested by cops who want you out of the way or killed by someone to whom you are merely an annoyance. So go back and do your job. And thank God you have that. Because I’m telling you that if you try and continue with this deal, you will be apprehended and you will be prosecuted, and I will personally testify against you. You will be convicted, and it will be under RICO, and you’ll go away not to a comfortable horse farm in the Pennsylvania countryside but to a nasty federal penitentiary filled with Mexicans who’ll slit your throat for a Marlboro.”

Young was high, but he was mesmerized now, a look of sheer terror on his face.

“It’s somebody else’s deal now,” Coakley said, more calmly. “Walk away and go have a life. You still have lots of opportunity. Write this off as a foolish experiment. You got lucky. The experiment failed.”

“Listen, I’ve got something that looks like it fits what you want,” Coakley said.

“When?” Jack asked.

“Tonight, as a matter of fact,” Coakley said.

“Where?”

“New England Medical Center, down on lower Washington Street,” Coakley said.

“The hospital?” Jack was surprised.

“They use it frequently,” Coakley said. “They meet late. The comings and goings of people of color down there aren’t noticed, nothing out of the ordinary. They use the employee entrance, and then there’s like a lunchroom inside where they go.”

Jesus, Jack thought, dealing in a hospital. “So what is this?” he asked.

“Cocaine,” Coakley said. “Modest supply. Some Colombian offshoot selling to Chinese. The Chinese use the hospital. It’s a block off Chinatown, so it’s good for them.”

“What time?”

“Ten,” Coakley said. “And because the Chinese are involved, it will happen at ten. They’re very punctual. If it gets to be ten past ten, they beat it. Assume something’s gone wrong.”

“So how sure are you about this?” Jack asked.

“Sure. Very sure. It’s definitely on.”

“Can I check tonight, around nine, to make sure?”

“I’ll be at my office,” Coakley said. “They like me standing by, in case …”

Jack took a deep breath. “You okay on this?” he asked.

Coakley hesitated. “I think so,” he replied. “You can never be sure, but I think so.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, I wanted to ask,” Coakley said. “Tell me if it’s
none of my business, but I wonder whether you know yet?”

“Not for certain,” Jack said.

“But you’re close,” Coakley said, finishing the sentence for him.

“Yes. I believe I am.”

“Good,” Coakley said, nodding to himself. And he meant it, for it all mattered so much to him now.

At nine-thirty
P.M
., Jack Devlin pulled into a legal parking space on lower Washington Street a half block down from the employee entrance at New England Medical Center.

He dialed Coakley’s office. “On?” he said.

“On,” Coakley replied.

Jack clicked off and watched the entrance to the hospital.

At nine-fifty, four Chinese men arrived at the employee entrance on foot. They were dressed casually in leather or suede jackets, as distinctly different from employees of the hospital in dress and manner as they could possibly be. They were tight, cautiously glancing around.

At 9:56
P.M
. a dark gray BMW 740 pulled up in front of the employee entrance. Two men got out and looked around. They entered the building. The driver of the car remained behind the wheel.

Jack dialed the number of Del Rio’s cellular phone.

“Yeah?” Del Rio answered.

“It’s Devlin.”

“What’s up?” Del Rio asked.

“I was checking up on Carazza,” Jack said, mentioning the name of a detective he suspected was crooked.
“And I kind of stumbled on something that might be happening, maybe tonight. Very muddled message from a source. Chinatown. Colombians doing coke to the Chinese. Supposedly tonight, but I don’t know. If you wanted to get someone on it.”

“How good’s the source?” Del Rio asked.

“Not great, not terrible,” Jack said. “Thinks it’s tonight but maybe not. May be too late, too.”

There was a pause at Del Rio’s end. “Okay,” he said, “let me make a call or two.” And he hung up.

Jack sat very still in the driver’s seat of his Cherokee. He said a brief, silent prayer that it was not true. He had thought Del Rio seemed increasingly on edge. He thought Del Rio seemed a little too inquisitive, more intrusive than he should be. He felt Del Rio’s shadow on his back all the time now. And he knew now, because he’d checked, that Lisa had not worked in some time, that she had been in and out of AA and other programs.

Jack calculated within his head the time it would take for Del Rio to dial his cell phone. He would call a contact somewhere who would receive the information with grateful alarm. That contact would then immediately dial the phone connecting him with another cell phone in the pocket of one of the men Jack had just seen enter the building. This would all probably take under a minute.

He held his breath. He very much wanted the six men who had just entered the building to come sauntering out in ten to fifteen minutes. He wanted the deal complete. But he feared what happened now before his eyes. The two men raced out the door and jumped into the BMW, which sped away. The four Chinese men exited the door
and dispersed in different directions, racing off into the night, thankful they hadn’t been busted, pleased that they had a protector on the Boston Police Department who tipped them to a possible police raid; pleased that they had on their payroll someone as knowledgeable as Del Rio.

“S
o what is it that those guys do exactly?” Del Rio asked. He and Jack stood by a bench in the Boston Public Garden across Arlington Street from the entrance to the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Jack looked over and saw three middle-aged men in dark suits with dark topcoats striding toward the hotel entrance. It was early evening, cocktail time.

“I don’t know,” Jack replied, uninterested.

“Come on,” Del Rio said, “you were on that track once. What are the possibilities?”

Jack shrugged. “Financial services. Banking, insurance, venture capital. Something like that.”

“So what do they make, would you say?” Del Rio asked. “Let’s say they’re moving along pretty good in their careers at their ages, what would you say, like pushing fifty, right? What would they make?”

“Jesus,” Jack said. “If they’re doing well they could make anywhere from, I don’t know, two fifty to … if they have a piece of a venture firm they could be making a couple million a year.”

“Fuck me!” Del Rio broke into a wide smile. “A couple mil a year? Jesus, we’re in the wrong game.” He gazed admiringly across Arlington Street. The men had
disappeared inside, into the alluring warmth of the bar. “Leave your nice corner office, head over to the Ritz, pick up a cold martini, maybe do it again, head home to a five-bedroom in Wellesley, beautiful-looking wife who works out five days, great body, sweet kids. What the fuck? Nice life, huh?”

Jack nodded.

“That’s what you should have done,” Del Rio said. “You could be in there now with a nicely shaped martini glass instead of out here in the cold. Instead of running the streets nights and chasing maggots. Snooping around after bad cops.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, and neither man looked away. A moment of reckoning had arrived and they both knew it. Jack thought he’d grown immune to hurts from others, that he was beyond being disappointed or let down by another human being. He was not angry. He was saddened, deeply so, by this betrayal from Del Rio.

“So I have this theory,” Jack said, eyeing Del Rio. It was a cold, raw night, but Jack had insisted they meet. They both wore jackets zipped to the chin, both with hands stuffed inside their jacket pockets. Jack wore a wool fitted baseball cap.

Del Rio, wearing an Irish scalley cap, cocked his head and regarded him. “Everyone has a theory,” he replied.

“I have this theory that several forces converged at some point,” Jack said. “Three forces, three trends, if you will.” He paused. “You familiar with the Turner thesis in American history?”

Del Rio crinkled his eyes and thought for a moment. “Manifest destiny?” he said tentatively.

Jack nodded.

Del Rio smiled. “You impressed?” he said.

“The inevitability of the American push westward. The push across the frontier as far west as the land went.”

Jack thrust his hands into his pockets and turned with his back to a sudden gust of wind.

“There’s a similar thing at work here, within this department,” he said.

“The Devlin thesis,” Del Rio said without smiling. He sat down on the bench and looked up at Jack.

“The Devlin thesis holds that there is an inevitable escalation in the level of corruption,” Jack said. “That it moves, as though a force of nature, from a free apple or cup of coffee to meals and then to drinks and then some Christmas presents and then cash … in return for what? For something. For considerations. For looking the other way mostly. For overcrowded nightclubs or illegal parking or a few blowjobs in the back booths. For considerations.”

He stood looking out at the traffic moving down Beacon Street. He glanced down at Del Rio sitting on the bench, his legs crossed.

“So what’s the second force?” Del Rio asked.

Jack took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “The second force is a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. Vacuums are quickly filled. With something. And with the demise of organized crime in the past few years, with all the brains behind O.C. going away or dying, a vacuum was created. All this protection money that had been paid to O.C. guys was now floating, free, available to be paid to someone else willing to render a protective service.”