The Dead Soul (13 page)

23

Monday, September 8, 5:42 P.M.

A Grand Pause in a musical score is a break, strategically placed in the middle of an unfolding drama. It is there to fool the listener into believing that something bigger is imminent. Getting Mary O’Keefe onto his 32-foot fiberglass Trojan fishing boat,
The Grand Pause
, turned out to be trickier than expected. The dockside was bustling with people. Probably the weather. It was a pleasant, warm night. One of the last few of the boating season. The whole belly clam shacks were open. The dockside tiki bars still allowed patrons to sit outside by the water. The harbor actually had a fresh smell to it. No dead fish or diesel fuel smog soiling the air.

The mailman had a stiletto switchblade with a pearl handle poked into Mary’s back underneath her shirt. He whispered threats into her ear with his hot breath—something about gutting her father and returning with his liver for Mary to eat raw. It was enough to keep the deacon’s daughter tamely walking by his side, groggy as she still was from being knocked out.

People looked. But the mailman and Mary appeared to be lovers, gently embraced, a little buzzed, heading off on a beautiful late-summer evening boat ride.

Beyond Boston Harbor, out in the open waves of the Atlantic Ocean, Mary O’Keefe drifted in and out of consciousness. The after-effects of the chloroform gave her a terrible migraine and she started vomiting.

“You’re cleaning that up,” he shouted into the wind, steering the boat. “Not me. That is friggin’ gross.”

On her knees, trying to keep her balance, Mary wiped her chin with her forearm. Every once in a while, she turned and looked up at her kidnapper.

“Pathetic, Mary. You’re just a piece of flesh.”

It took almost two hours to get to the destination he liked. No one was around for miles in any direction, just the open seas. Mary could scream until her vocal cords tore into raw nerve endings.

“I hate to have to sacrifice you, Mary O’Keefe.” The mailman maneuvered the boat to face the east, stalled the engines. He had a tongue-in-cheek tone to his voice, patronizing Mary. “But your father did so many terrible things that I don’t know where to even begin to illuminate you on the facts. You do deserve an explanation. I understand this part of it. But I am the one in control of this ship”—he laughed at his stupid joke—“and I do not feel the need to give you one.”

6:12 P.M.

They were anchored in an area outside Boston Harbor where you could look in all directions and not see land. By now, Mary O’Keefe had accepted her fate. This madness was somehow God’s plan, she figured. Her destiny. Her cross. Yet as insane as it seemed to die by the hand of this maniac, Mary had found her vocation. The truth was, as Mary sat in adoration earlier that morning, she hadn’t told anyone, but she’d made a decision. Heading north, as her father announced to the parish without telling her, was not what Mary wanted to do with her life after all. It was her father’s idea.
His
dream. Mary wanted to concentrate on acting school and travel with the theater. She believed Christ saved the world and repenting was one way to enter into the Kingdom. But she didn’t want to devote her life to the cloth like her miserable father. He was a fraud. She did not want any part of being a liar. When she was bedridden sick for a few months one time, the deacon made Mary feel as if she was some sort of burden. An invalid taking up his time and wasting his money. The things he had said to her when she asked for something. Now she hated him for it; and yet, at the same time, had forgiven the man.

6:44 P.M.

As the mailman scanned the outer waters of Cape Cod Bay with binoculars to make sure no one was around, he spoke to an unresponsive Mary O’Keefe. She was lying on the deck of the boat in back of him, one arm over her forehead, the other on her stomach.

“You see, Mary, for the same reason that there is good and evil in this world and people question ‘God’s plan,’ there is really no rhyme or reason as to why I chose to kill you. Some might say I am taking revenge on your father. And that may very well be true. But it is a subjective opinion.” He wiped his brow as the wind kicked up and white caps crested on the swells. It got much colder as the sun set beyond the horizon. “To sum it up, Mary, you are, simply, the chosen one.”

Still nursing her queasy stomach, Mary acted as though she was drifting in and out,. While trying to gain her composure. The mailman walked over, grabbed Mary by the back of the head. Looked into her eyes. Studied her for a moment. There was no reason, he deduced, to tie up this pathetic woman. Her being seasick and still suffering from the effects of being knocked out was a sufficient enough prison for the time being.

Mary remained silent. A moan here, a deep breath and gag in her throat there.

The mailman’s sonar told him the ocean floor was 350 feet below the boat. The swells calmed. If they were lucky, the mailman considered, standing on the deck, looking out at the rising moon, a humpback might surface and take a breath, put on a show.

“Incredible animals, Mary. The sheer grace. You can understand grace, can’t you, Mary?”

He turned his back to his victim, walked over and took his murder kit out of a padlocked storage bin below the steering column. He set the thing on the seat and unfolded the knife set from a rolled-up pouch in which a barber might keep an inventory of scissors. One finger on his lips, he stared at the serrated knife.

Well, what do we have here …

While lost in his own selfish satisfaction, a loud splash came from the stern of the boat.

Startled by the noise, he turned. It sounded as if someone tossed something overboard.

“Mary?”

She was gone.

24

Monday, September 8, 6:49 P.M.

Seeing that photograph in the church rec hall had set the wheels spinning for Jake. An idea sent him off and running. He called home, told Dawn to eat dinner without him. He needed to go see an old friend.

“Sure, babe. I’ll make a plate and put in the fridge. You want me to wait up?”

“No. Sorry, honey.”

“I love you.”

“Me, too.”

Lots of couples used the phrase. But what did it mean—
me too?

Dawn could sense that Jake was focused. Once he set his mind on something, that was it, there was no stopping the guy.

As Jake started for home from St. Paul’s, it had hit him. He recognized the kid in the photo as Joe “Bags” Cane, a three-time Southie loser who Jake had arrested for all sorts of crimes. Robbery. Bookmaking. Crack dealing. You name it. Cane had even once started a pyramid scheme and ran it out of Old Colony Project. Jake had grown up with Cane. They hung around the church together as kids, trying to stay out of trouble. And yet it was a double homicide Cane got involved in that Jake thought about as he went in search of his old buddy.

The Ted Williams Tunnel into East Boston was closed because of the collapse, inspections and repairs. So Jake took the Tobin Bridge over the Mystic River into Chelsea and Revere. 

Cane hung out at a pool hall inside a bowling alley near Malone Park on Warren Avenue in Revere. Jake knew he’d find him there, probably trying to con some insurance exec stopping in for happy hour—tie loosened, top button undone, the dude half-drunk—out of his mortgage payment.

The rain started as Jake got off the Tobin. He drove into the end of town where the oil tankers docked and that smell of fresh gasoline enveloped the inside of his car.

Cane’s past mattered little to Jake. The fact that he was tied to a Cambridge homicide just recently was where Jake got interested. One of the victim’s legs had severe lacerations, as though someone had taken a knife to her. Cane was never a suspect in the sense that he killed the woman. But during his last bit, a three-year run for turning over a Korean grocery and beating the owner into a stupor, he claimed to know a guy who had some information about the case. No one ever followed up after D-12 failed to locate the snitch. But Cane convinced the DA to reduce his sentence for the info. Now was a good time for Bags Cane to pay for that free ride.

Jake unloosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button on his shirt, walked in, and spotted Cane by the video games in the back of the bar. He passed butcher-block Formica tables, chipped and carved up with patrons’ initials, in between vinyl red booths with silver duct tape covering the rips. The bartender stared at Jake with a look that said he had five minutes.

Cane played an old-school, beat-up Pac Man machine from the eighties pushed up against the back wall. Jake snuck up behind him while that annoying
wok-wok-wok-wok-wok
sound followed the Pac Man around as it gobbled up blinking dots.

The jukebox was in the middle of Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like I Do” and that strange guitar part where Frampton talks and plays his guitar at the same time.

“No kids around to swindle out of their paper route money tonight, Bags?” Jake put his arm around Cane’s shoulder, gave him a strong squeeze, letting him know who was in charge. Cane wore a jean jacket, cut up and greasy. He had a blue bandana wound thick around his head like a gangbanger. A wallet chain hung from his back pocket. He got nickname Bags from the Reilly brothers in junior high. Because Cane’s dime bags of weed were more like nickels, the name stuck.

Cane didn’t turn around. He looked at Jake in the reflection of the glass covering the screen. “Detective Cooper, hey, man. Long time, no see.”

“You’re rockin’ that whole nineteen-eighty-three Bruce Springsteen, ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ look, huh. Doesn’t suit you well, Bags.” Jake turned to see who was watching. Some white dude with dreadlocks, wearing a visor cap, a pencil-thin mustache, was talking on his cell, staring down at the floor. The bartender was playing a game of liar’s poker with two regulars sitting at the bar. It was clear to Jake no one gave two shits about Bags Cane.

Jake certainly had no respect for guys who dealt dope to kids. Cane had started with weed, graduated to crack, acquired his master’s in heroin. Real scumbag, Jake knew firsthand. Cane was a guy who needed to be manhandled with that same street mentality he responded to.

“Let’s go, Bags. Outside.”

Hanging over the pool table behind them was one of those square Schlitz lights left over from the seventies. Two guys stood with pool sticks butted to the floor. They drank longneck Buds. Laughed about something. Near them, some chick argued with her boyfriend on a pay phone.

“Come on, Jake. I ain’t done nothing.’ ”

“Outside, Bags. We need to talk.”

“I’m playing a game here …”

Wok-wok-wok-wok-wok
. Frampton was guitar-talking those words from his song still.

“Looks like you got high score, too.” Jake smiled. “That’s too bad.” He grabbed Cane by the ear and pulled him toward the door. “Do you feel like I do, Bags?”

No one paid attention.

“Jake, man, what are you doin’? You cannot embarrass me like this. Ouch, man. Stop it.”

“Long time, Bags. How ya been?” When they got outside, Jake gave Cane a good push and he stumbled on the sidewalk. Almost fell. Jake looked both ways down the block. “Over there.” He pointed. “Lean up against my car.”

“What the hell do you want, anyway? I’m clean, man.”

Jake patted Cane down, just to be sure. “Tell me about the tip you gave in turn for that get-out-of-jail-free card the DA handed you. The Cambridge case.”

“Not sure I know what you mean.” Cane leaned with his back up against Jake’s car. A neon OPEN sign in the front window of the bar flashed red on his face. Part of its glare shone red along Jake’s blue suit. It was dark. Cold. The streets had a shiny glaze from a misty drizzle. The music was still playing inside the bar, but it sounded muffled standing outside.

“I’m going to say this once more. Then I’m going to hurt you, simple as that. That tip you gave D-Twelve detectives to get time chewed off your last bit. The Cambridge murder, asshole. The one where the dude got all crazy with a knife. You have five seconds.”

Jake walked over and, without warning, slugged Bags in the face.

“Shit, Coop … what was that for?” Cane said, spitting blood on the ground, holding his mouth.

Cooper cocked his fist back and held it.

“Oh, that one,” Bags said. “Yeah, I think I recall now something about it.” He kept rubbing his ear and chin. “You really hurt my earlobe, Jake, you know that. Now my chin, man … what the fuck.”

Jake moved closer. “Come on. Don’t fuck with me here, Bags. It’s late and I’m in no mood.”

“Look,” Cane glanced right and left to make sure no one was watching them, “there’s this guy out in Framingham, weird dude … likes to order the whores with limps and weird sorts of things wrong with them. Dead eye. Freakish scars. He’s whacked, man. Screwed in the head. He, like, keeps knives and stuff on the walls next to posters of movies like
Hostel
and
Saw
. Collects serial killer memorabilia. Heard he wanted to pay ten K for any piece of clothing related to that JonBenet case. One of Charlie Tex’s girls ran out of his house all freaked out was what I heard in the joint. She couldn’t go back on the street for months. Said she’d never go back to the dude’s house. I guess he wanted to pay her all sorts of money to cut on her legs as he was getting off. He showed her these snuff photos he said he bought on eBay. Called them four dead blondes. You know, like that band from the eighties—”

Jake interrupted. “Name?”

“Look, I don’t know. All I—”

Jake moved nose to nose with Cane. “Name, Bags.”

“I just know where he lives, man. Come on. Back off.”

Bags pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Jake grabbed it, took one out of the sleeve, crumpled the pack and tossed it.

After lighting the cigarette, Jake pulled out a pad from an inside pocket. “Draw me a map. If it’s wrong, I’m coming back.”