Serpents in the Cold (18 page)

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Locke-Ober, Boston

AT WHITE-CLOTHED DINNER
tables before the mayor's podium sat various city officials: the chief of police, the fire marshal, businessmen, civic leaders, a rabbi, ministers, and Catholic clergy from Wards 8 and 9. Cal spotted Sister Bridget among a group of nuns from, he presumed, the Catholic charities in the city to which the congressman had been so kind. When she turned in Cal's direction, her face stiffened, but he couldn't be sure she'd seen him at all. She nodded at whatever the nun on her left was saying but otherwise glanced out at the vast ballroom, the lights from the chandelier glinting in her eyes. Some of the sisters chatted amiably, and now and again laughed. They appeared taken with the congenial, upbeat mood of the moment, and the drink and food and music were fast flowing, creating a contagion of goodwill and exuberance—all of it suggesting how the coming times might be, that things could only be looking up for Boston.

On the dance floor three couples held each other close in a slow dance, pink and blue globes of light swirling over the polished hardwood, and everything seemed to sway to the sounds of the Marv Reynolds Band. A small party of guests dressed in tuxedos sat at the bar and were attempting to sing over the music of the band, swaying, waiting for the bartender to take notice of them. It was the Boston College fight song, and Dante and Cal were forced to listen.

The men raised their voices as they approached the song's last refrain, and in response Cal banged the bar with his fist.

The lights came up a notch and then dimmed. Marv Reynolds signaled for the band to wind down the last song of the set as former mayor James Michael Curley crossed the stage parquet and stepped up to the podium. He was a short, bluff man who had once been in shape but now hefted a generous beer belly. A cigar smoldered in his right hand. He began talking before the band had completed its final song, so it was difficult to understand what he was saying, but Dante was quite sure he'd taken a poke at the Teamsters, his opponent in the upcoming mayoral race, and the Temperance League of Greater Boston. When he was done, he swept back his short arm and the stage spotlight fell on Congressman Foley. It followed him from his chair to the stage, where he shook hands with both the former and the current mayors and then stepped behind the podium. The crowd applauded and the congressman beamed a wide smile and raised a thankful hand to the audience, who eventually stilled. Dante looked to Cal and Cal raised his eyebrows.

“My friends, my fellow Bostonians,” he said, and his voice carried throughout the room, a resonant baritone, his words perfectly paced and emphasized for effect. “Our city is at a grave crossroad, one where we find ourselves losing ground in manufacturing, medicine, and education—once the mainstays of this great commonwealth. We find ourselves beset and besieged by crime and vice. At night our streets are no longer safe to walk. During the day our parks are mostly empty. Our families—parents and their children, the rich future of our city—leave in droves, out to the suburbs or to other cities in other states, because they believe we have forgotten them, that we have turned our backs, and it is true. Many elected officials of this state and this nation have turned their backs on them, the very class of people that once made this city great.

“But where does such vice come from?” Foley asked, and spread his hands wide. “Where do we begin—how do we begin to create a change and to build for a different type of future, a future where all of our citizens have opportunity and the possibility to succeed? Well, right here, right outside our front door. On the streets that hide and shelter vice, that allow vice to spread unchecked like some infestation—because, yes, that is what it is, an infestation that we must eradicate. Did past generations filled with immigrant struggle work so hard so that we, their sons and daughters, might merely bow down in defeat to such forces? Do we not care about our city anymore, about its crimes and the types we let control us and determine our future? No!”

Waiters bearing drinks moved from table to table, replenishing wine and liquor. One of them knocked over a glass, but the echo of its clanging upon the table made few heads turn. The majority of the crowd remained transfixed by the congressman.

“I stand up here with many of the city's finest citizens, dedicated to making this city again the place it once was, to wiping out crime, to cleaning the streets of vice, to making this city a shining jewel once again, and I ask you for your support. If I am elected senator, I will use my power in Washington to ensure we are not forgotten any longer, that the nation does not turn its back on us. With federal funding and private backing we can rebuild this city, we can rebuild those depressed neighborhoods that have for so long blighted the landscape of Boston, that have caused us to stagnate.”

Cal sipped his drink and gritted his teeth. He knew what neighborhoods Foley was talking about, had seen his notion of “redevelopment” firsthand. He doubted any in the room knew people who lived in Scollay or the West End, or cared what would happen to them in the congressman's plans for the future.

“With new developments we can revitalize the economy; we can create new jobs and new opportunities—as a city we will thrive again! And the rest of our nation will turn their eyes to Massachusetts and look at us as we once were, the Cradle of Liberty, the Athens of America, Boston, the City on a Hill!”

Congressman Foley thumped the lectern. Chairs scraped as diners stood and applauded. Foley's cheeks shone bright with passion, and it seemed as if he might be on the verge of tears.

The Boston College boys shouted from the bar and smashed a bottle. Marv Reynolds struck up the band, and they launched into a sweeping number that punctuated Congressman Foley's walk beneath the tracking spotlight from the podium and back down off the stage, among the diners, and amid handshakes, hugs, and cheers, to his own table, where the spotlight finally dissolved.

Dante was at Cal's shoulder. “Do you believe this shit? He couldn't have planned it better,” he said. “I've never seen anything like it.”

“And I doubt we will again, that is, unless he plans to run for president.”

“You think now's the time to talk to him?”

“I think our timing stinks, and it's a lousy idea to do it here, of all places, but I don't think we have a choice.”

CONGRESSMAN FOLEY HAD
just put his knife and fork to the pork loin and roasted potatoes, served to him steaming on a gold-rimmed plate, when he caught sight of them at the bar looking his way. He hadn't seen Cal or Dante for years, but it was as if the old neighborhood remained stamped upon their brows. Cal's face appeared to be scraped raw by the cold and by drink. Yet despite this, he had a youthful and cocky demeanor about him, in the way Foley remembered Cal from before the war and his boxing days down at the L Street Bathhouse. At his side, Dante looked awful. He could have passed as an advertisement for a communist soup kitchen, with his thorny five o'clock shadow and his threadbare black-gray wardrobe: Dante the proletarian, a silhouette cut from the fabric of a moonless night.

He watched them as they strode between tables, staring at the diners, and them in their hats and coats—a bold statement itself in a place like this. He glanced about the room and a thought spilled and settled into his mind that they were here to see him, and with a slight sense of shame tightening his throat, he realized that he would have to greet them. He took a bite of pork, but he was no longer hungry. He returned his knife and fork to the white table linen, gulped down a generous mouthful from his cocktail. He'd already had three drinks, and that didn't include the two during his lunch meeting with Senator Gibbons. If he was going to continue to drink, he decided, he might as well meet Cal and Dante head-on; no sense in prolonging the inevitable.

The man sitting next to him was a union representative who started talking nonsense in his ear about one of the North Shore pols taking money off the top and paying his mistress with free rent for her and her bastard kid. Foley half listened to the man, didn't really give two shits, and kept his eyes on Cal and Dante as they approached.

 “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, holding a hand up to the union rep, silencing him mid-sentence as Cal and Dante stopped before the table. The story about the pol's mistress and triple time for city workers plowing the streets on Sundays had mercilessly merged together. “Got to take a walk down memory lane for a bit.” He knocked back the rest of the drink, the ice clinking against his front teeth.

“Hello, Michael,” Cal said, glancing over at Foley's wife, Celia, and nodding, a gesture that she returned before taking a measured sip from her wineglass. He looked over at the union official, the man in the middle, and the tall thin one whom he recognized from the bulldozed lot in Scollay Square—the man Tim Donovan, his driver, had called McAllister. Two women, a peroxide blonde and a redhead, on either side of them smiling.

“I hear you boys got those plans for clearing Boston's blight already in hand,” Cal said, and grinned at the table.

“Who is this?” McAllister asked Foley.

“Just someone from the old neighborhood,” the congressman said. “One of our many fine voting citizens, isn't that right, Cal?”

“That's right, Michael. Me and Dante have been voting for you since we were old enough to draw Xs on the ballot.”

“Were they invited to this dinner?” McAllister continued. He glanced at Foley and then returned to his plate, carving out the fat from his prime rib.

“Probably not.”

“Well, then, they should go, shouldn't they?” he said without looking up.

“We'll let you eat your meal in peace, Francis. I'll be back in just a bit. C'mon, gentlemen, a bottle on me.” Foley pulled the napkin off his lap, dropped it down next to his plate, patted the other man in a knowing, commiserating way upon the shoulder, took his fresh drink, a gin gimlet, and then led them past several tables to the bar. Cal glanced back to the table, wanting to make contact with the developer, McAllister, but the man wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a stare-down, and seemed to be taking great pleasure in dissecting his prime rib before allowing himself a bite.

Standing between Cal and Dante, Foley could smell the old neighborhood on them. The tobacco, stale smoke, whiskey and beer, potatoes and cabbage, dime-store licorice candies, gasoline, and cheap musk that came in a tin as if it were oil, all products of the Avenue. It was familiar and comforting, despite the circumstances, and he briefly allowed himself to step into the past and the history he shared with the two men before him.

He set his drink down at the edge of the bar, and the younger bartender went to work on making him another one, but Foley held up a hand, gestured with three fingers, and mouthed the word “Jameson.”

“I don't like that fuck,” Cal said, gesturing back toward the table and McAllister.

“Oh stop, Cal.” Foley waved it away. “It's over. That's what you learn in politics—forgive, but never ever forget. The enemies you make today might be your friends tomorrow.”

“Is that right?”

“It most certainly is. You should already know that from our fathers' history.”

“Our fathers hated each other's guts.”

“And that was politics too. They were friends before any of that.”

The young bartender placed three whiskeys before them, left the bottle of Jameson on the marble top, and then moved quickly to the end of the bar. They took their drinks but held them as if waiting for somebody to provide a proper toast.

“To the old neighborhood,” Congressman Foley said, raising his glass, and Cal and Dante echoed, “To the old neighborhood.” They tapped their whiskeys together before knocking them back, and Foley poured another round.

“Why are you two here?”

“The high life,” Cal said. “Just want to see what we've been avoiding for so long.”

“You came up to me looking like you meant business.”

Cal nodded. “Okay, then. Do you happen to know a Mike Scarletti from Providence?”

Congressman Foley paused with the glass to his mouth, considered the name for a moment, sipped on his drink. “No, I can't place the name. Should I? Or is this a game? And this guy, this Scarletti, he's some gangster my brother's messed up with? Is that it?”

“Not quite.” Cal tapped his glass on the bar. “This Scarletti drove a big rig in which they found the bodies of three prostitutes. They'd all been tortured and killed. He also killed Sheila Anderson.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Foley worked his jaw as though he'd just been sucker punched in the face. It was as if the temperature had suddenly doubled in the vast hotel ballroom and wrapped its hands around his throat. He loosened the red-and-black-striped tie he was wearing; a look of revulsion carried through his soft, photogenic face.

“You heard, then?” Dante asked.

“Yes, I heard, but I didn't know about the truck, the other girls.”

“Your brother's involved.”

“How do you know that?”

“The rig was left out on the Calf Pasture, by the Half-Mile dump. It was left on your brother's property.”

“Just because it was on his property doesn't make him guilty of anything.”

Cal held his gaze and after a moment Foley nodded. “You disagree, but what do the police think?”