The Son of John Devlin (7 page)

But Coakley had tired of his clientele. His Catholic-size conscience weighed on him. He had never represented an innocent man, and that took its toll—even on a lawyer. He also felt a debt to the Devlins.

“Young’s okay?” Devlin asked.

Coakley shot him a quick sideways glance. “Okay?” he asked as though it was a foolish idea. “What’s your definition of okay, Jack? Is someone who does dope at breakfast okay? Jesus.” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “He’s ready.”

Coakley bundled his trash together and shuffled over to the rubbish barrel. He shuffled back to the bench, running a hand through his hair. The two men watched in silence as a child who had skinned his knee in the playground went crying to his mother.

“To me, it’s got a bad feel to it,” Coakley said. “It’s a business best left to those who know it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know …”

“So if you were me …” Devlin began.

“If I were you, I would have signed the contract,” Coakley said. “You’d have been a big star in Montreal. No better city in the world to play in. Endorsements, whatever you wanted. I would have signed, to be honest with you.”

Coakley turned to Devlin and looked him squarely in
the eye. “I mean, what kind of life is this, you snoop around talking with people like me. Chasing crazy kids around bad neighborhoods.” He looked away and waved his hand as though dismissing the entire idea. “Fuck that.”

Abruptly, he turned back to Devlin. “You went to law school to do
this
?” he said, as though the notion was obviously preposterous, and shook his head again.

Jack Devlin had grown accustomed to Coakley’s outbursts. The lawyer had a propensity to tell him how he should or should not live his life. Devlin didn’t mind. He liked Coakley.

The two men rose from the bench, as if on cue, and began walking slowly toward the subway stop across the way. At the edge of the park they came to a stop.

“Thanks,” Devlin said. “I appreciate it.”

Coakley nodded, but then he could not help himself, could not stop himself from blurting what he felt. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Jack,” he said. “Something’s not right here. Really not right.”

J
ackie Devlin stood in the schoolyard on a chilly fall day glaring at the two eighth graders taunting him. Their insults had come after a group of eighth graders had beaten Jack and other seventh graders in a game of schoolyard basketball. Recess was over and time had come to return to class.

Dozens of children were moving from their activities—basketball, kickball, tag—to form lines leading back into school. The two nuns on schoolyard duty were back inside the school, at the head of the lines. Jack and the two boys were all the way across the yard, near the basketball hoop, two hundred feet from the school.

The taunting from the other boys triggered something within Jack Devlin and he reacted suddenly, instinctively. He flashed a right hand that caught the first boy, the bigger one, by surprise. The bony knuckles of Jack’s small, hard fist landed on the bridge of the boy’s nose and then there was blood pouring down over the boy’s mouth and chin. He crumpled to the ground.

“You little asshole,” the other boy, McKay, said.

McKay was the toughest kid in the eighth grade, a boy who never let a week go by without an after-school fight
along the railroad tracks. He quickly put up his fists and moved toward Jack in a crouch.

The bigger boy, Dillon, was still on the ground, blood staining his white dress shirt.

McKay pounded Jack with a right hand that landed on Jack’s left cheekbone, but, oddly, it did not bother him. Jack was extremely calm and in a crouch, his fists high. McKay threw the same punch several more times, landing it on Jack’s cheekbone again. Jack kept moving forward until he quickly threw his own right hand, which landed just above McKay’s left eye and made him wince in pain.

Though Jack Devlin was smaller than the two eighth graders, he was thick and powerful, far stronger than either one. Instinctively, Jack maneuvered himself into position so he could grasp the shoulder of McKay’s shirt. He clutched the material with his left hand, clamping it down so McKay could not throw a punch with his right hand. McKay was left unprotected as Jack threw a series of rights at his face and head, vicious blows delivered in rapid-fire fashion.

Dillon got to his feet and watched in horror as his friend was beaten up by a younger, smaller boy.

One of the nuns charged across the pavement, screaming at Jack to stop. But he did not stop, for he now had McKay helpless, defenseless. McKay had turned away, trying to hide and protect his face, and Jack shifted position so he could continue to pound away.

“Stop this minute!” the nun shouted as she charged at Jack, reaching out to grab his arm.

He slipped her grasp and threw yet another punch, this one landing squarely on McKay’s nose. McKay cried
out in pain and slumped to the ground, facedown. Blood from his nose formed a small pool on the pavement.

The nun, stunned by the ferocity of what she had witnessed, involuntarily made a rapid Sign of the Cross.

“John Devlin, go into the school right now!” she ordered furiously, and without a word Devlin obeyed. The nun helped McKay to his feet and walked with him and Dillon into the school and down to the basement nurse’s office.

The school principal, Sister Marguerite, trembled with rage when she saw the faces of McKay and Dillon and the blood soaking their shirts. She trembled with anger as she sat Jack Devlin down in a chair in her office, the door closed.

“I want an apology this instant, young man,” she said, her voice struggling to control her anger.

“Sorry,” Jack said without a bit of sincerity.

“You don’t sound very sorry,” she said.

“I’m not,” he shot back.

She was stunned by his insolence. Was this the boy who had proven to be the brightest in his class? The boy who had been so introverted since the death of his father that the school had summoned a priest from the archdiocese specializing in psychology to come and talk with him every month?

“Do not speak with disrespect to me, mister,” she said harshly.

Jack looked down at his shoes. His white shirt was torn, one of the buttons ripped off in the fight.

“Look up at me, Mr. Devlin,” she said angrily.

Jack did, and it frightened her. His eyes were vacant. He seemed so very cool and calm. She had seen many boys through the years after schoolyard fights, some
rather nasty. And in every case, without exception, the boys were trembling, shaking from the trauma of the violence. And here was Jack Devlin sitting calmly, not breathing heavily, looking as though he had just come from the library. She looked into his eyes, and he seemed untroubled. He seemed, she would later recall, to be a boy without a conscience, without a hint of remorse for what he had done.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They were picking on me,” Jack said.

“Why?”

“We had a basketball game and they beat us and they were ranking on me,” Jack said.

“And?” she asked.

“And I didn’t like it,” he said.

“We are going to go down to the nurse’s office right now, John Devlin, and you are going to apologize to those boys and then you are going to your classroom and stand up front and tell the class you are sorry for bringing discredit upon the seventh grade, and then you are going across the street to Father Graham to say your confession and beg for—and I do mean beg for—God’s forgiveness.”

Sister Marguerite walked him along the silent hallways of the school, down a flight of stairs to the basement to the nurse’s office. McKay and Dillon were sitting side by side, chunks of cotton up their noses. The nurse had wiped the blood from their faces and she was tending to a scrape on the side of McKay’s face, sustained when he hit the pavement.

“John Devlin has something to say to the both of you,” Sister Marguerite said.

“Sorry,” Jack mumbled as he averted his eyes.

Sister Marguerite was about to ask for something more sincere but decided she had gotten the minimum required.

“He attacked us,” Dillon said weakly. “For no reason. He—”

Sister Marguerite silenced him. “We will sort it out later, William,” she said, turning and leading Devlin from the nurse’s office.

“Mrs. Creedon, could you please bring the boys to their classroom now,” Sister Marguerite said. “I want them present for John Devlin’s comments.”

Sister Marguerite and Jack went to his classroom, where the principal interrupted class and had Jack stand up and apologize for bringing discredit upon the seventh grade. He did as he was told, again without any hint of remorse.

And then Sister Marguerite walked Jack Devlin out into the hallway. There, they stood silently as Dillon and McKay walked into the eighth-grade classroom. When they were settled, Sister Marguerite entered the room with Jack. The room fell silent. Sister Marguerite, and the nun who taught the eighth grade, walked to the rear of the classroom. Jack stood in front. He looked out over the class and his eyes came to rest on McKay, who had a look of malice. He mouthed words for Devlin:
After school. After school
. He mouthed them again. And again. He was taunting Devlin again.

“John Devlin, do you have something to say?” Sister Marguerite asked.

“Ah …” Devlin said, hesitating, fumbling for words.

He paused. There was a long, awkward silence.

Sister Marguerite was exasperated. “John Devlin, do you have an apology to make?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said in a rapid monotone.

Sister Marguerite had had it. “John Devlin, this class requires a sincere apology.”

Jack glanced again at McKay.
After school
, McKay mouthed again.
After school
.

“Sorry,” he said, this time with a hint of mockery in his voice. Sister Marguerite’s nostrils flared.

“John Devlin,” she said crossly, “you—”

“I’m sorry I beat their fucking heads in,” Jack Devlin said as the nuns and other children gasped. “And after school I’m going to do it again.”

And he had.

E
mily Lawrence ran along Beacon Street in Waban and turned off on the side street leading to her house. She checked her watch and saw that she’d been running for fifty-three minutes, about six miles. She walked the few hundred yards down her street to begin the process of cooling down. At home she checked her answering machine and found she had several calls, including one from Jack Devlin. They were talking every day and sometimes several times a day. She thought about Jack and how different he was from the other men with whom she’d been involved.

She had been serious about three men in her life. Steven Tucker had been a law school classmate, a personable, hardworking man with a passion for the law. They had lived together in New York the summer between their second and third years in law school, when Steven was working for an urban antipoverty agency in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn while she worked on the legal staff at the EPA. Emily had been very much in love. She’d believed that after graduation they would continue to live together and, at some point, get married.

That changed one late summer weekend. Emily had
gone to visit her parents, while Steven stayed in the city to prepare for a trial. But when she returned late Saturday afternoon—long before her scheduled return on Sunday—she’d opened the door to their studio apartment to find Steven in the act with a girl who looked barely sixteen.

She’d been so stunned that she merely stood there as her beloved Steven—so engrossed in his new friend that he had not heard her enter the apartment—continued on his energetic way.

So that’s what it looks like to a third party, she thought. My God! So much more elemental than she would have imagined.

“Steven …” she’d said, with more annoyance than outrage. The girl lay there, on her back, frozen in horror, staring at her. Steven whipped around and his eyes bulged in cartoonlike fashion. He literally jumped to his feet and turned toward her, which only made matters worse. Much worse. Emily burst into tears then, turned, and ran from the apartment building, never to return. She and Steven had two subsequent conversations, via telephone, both ending with him begging her to forgive him. In fact, she wanted to forgive him, and would have, she thought, if she hadn’t seen him in the act. The image was fixed in her mind and she could not erase it.

James had been older and more mature. He was ten years her senior, which did not bother her. She was attracted to him for his innate kindness. He was a gentle soul, an enormously decent man. He worked as the executive director of a foundation that provided medical assistance to the emerging world. He was well-traveled, spoke four languages fluently and two others passably. She found herself so very comfortable with James. He
was the easiest man to be with she had ever met, unfailingly pleasant. They never once had an argument.

And that, it had turned out, had been the problem. James would not be engaged, could not be engaged, in any sort of discussion of an intensely personal nature. A discourse on the travails of the economies of sub-Saharan Africa? James was your man. Details about relief programs in former Soviet satellites? James had them. But talk about the future? About life together? About one’s most intensely personal hopes and dreams? James might just as well try and propel himself to the moon by flapping his arms. James, Emily discovered, was the poster boy for modern man’s inability to commit, or discuss anything related to commitment.

It ended not in anger, but frustration. Emily had had a hard time getting over James.

Ian had helped. A native of Glasgow, he was a graduate of the London School of Economics and fancied himself an entrepreneur. He and a partner started a small software firm that had been quite successful. But that had been some years earlier, and Ian had more bluster than energy, it turned out. He loved life, travel, and learning about other cultures, knew wine and poetry and had actually read Proust! But Ian’s ideas, charmingly dashed out on cocktail napkins, proved more fanciful than real. And in the end Emily had quietly withdrawn from the entanglement.