The Son of John Devlin (11 page)

Jack sat for a moment and gathered his thoughts. He took a deep breath, knelt down on the cushioned kneeler, made the Sign of the Cross, and bowed his head. Then he prayed, as he did every day, for his father and mother. He prayed for their souls to be blessed with grace and that they find comfort in eternity. And he prayed now for wisdom and understanding and for strength.

He sat back in the pew, holding the envelope in both
hands, looking down at what was written on the label.
To my son Jack on his twenty-first birthday
.

The writing, in blue ink, was in a somewhat undisciplined, looping style. The letters were too large, lacking in sophistication. Jack peeled away a small piece of the envelope flap from the corner. It was easier than he’d expected, since the glue had dried over the years and lost its strength. Making a small hole, he slipped a finger in and carefully ran it along the envelope, tearing open one end, then bowed the envelope so he could see inside. There was a surprisingly thick width of paper, which he removed. The paper was white, with thin blue lines. It was dry, and some of the sheets flaked at the bottom.

He set the sheets on his lap and began reading.

My dear son, Jack
,

Let me begin by saying to you on your twenty-first birthday that I love you very much, far more than probably you can imagine as a young man
.

It is my hope, and I certainly expect, that you will never read this letter, because I expect to live a nice long life. But if anything does happen, I want you to know, in my own words, what went on. That’s important to me, especially now
.

As I sit here very, very early in the morning, a few minutes before four
A.M.
,
I have just come back from your bedroom where I pushed the hair off your forehead and felt your sweaty neck under the covers. I leaned over and kissed your forehead and then I sat down on the edge of your bed and gathered you into my arms and I felt so much love for you
.

And now I am at the kitchen table and I made a pot of coffee and I am gathering my thoughts as best as I
can so that you will know the truth, because to me at this point that is more important than anything, and I include in that the trial, which is all anybody talks about to me anymore
.

The honor that I once had is now gone
.

To me, this is the worst part about the whole thing because we have our honor and what else do we have? Money does not matter in the end except as it relates to being able to take care of the basics for your family. Money does not matter, believe me when I tell you this. Don’t do anything for money alone. If you do something you love to do and there is money, fine. But otherwise, no
.

So how did it come to this? is what you probably most want to know. What was really going on. But it is important to me that you know everything
.

When I first went on the job, it was very different from the way it is now. It was a much simpler time. That’s all changed. Now things are filled with angles. But when I started out, I went on the job because it appealed to me and I thought I would be good at it and it was a place where you could get some security and be sure there would be a job there until retirement
.

I started out pounding a beat in Roslindale Square, as you know, and I enjoyed that very much, with the people there, from Henry Goon, the Chinaman, to the colored woman at Lodgen’s, to Sam the Jewish butcher, to all of them. If you had gone up and down Corinth or Wash or Centre or Belgrade, whatever, to Boschetto’s, anyplace, and asked, they would have told you the same thing: Jock plays it straight. Jock watches out for you whether you’re a Jew or colored
or Italian or whatever you are or may be. Jock watches out, keeps an eye out. And it’s true
.

From the very beginning there were gifts at Christmastime. Considerations from the merchants. They appreciated what you did and so there may have been a bottle from Henry Goon or two pies from Mrs. Cunningham and whatnot. There were gifts that came my way, and to not accept them from people who were truly grateful to have a cop who did the right thing for them would have been the height of what was rude and wrong
.

Everyone did this. It was the rule, not the exception. I have had many discussions with my lawyer preparing for trial and he has talked incessantly about the police culture, and one of the points he will try to make to the jury is that this has been a way of life for many, many years, and it has. Under the federal law, when you receive something from someone it is called a gratuity. As though it was a tip of some kind. But to me these have always been an expression of gratitude and I have never ever had any trouble with my conscience or otherwise accepting these things. Would anyone? I don’t think so, not anyone reasonable
.

The problem started when I made detective, not right away but soon after. When you make detective it is an entirely different ball game, obviously, from having a beat, a defined small area. As a detective you have a sector of the city, and mine included, as you know by now, the Fenway and a piece of the Back Bay. Not starting out, because I started in East Boston, but that only lasted a couple of years and soon enough I was in the Fenway and Back Bay, and those areas are
filled with bars and nightclubs and the lion’s share of the work involves those places
.

These were places where all of the worst things about a city can be seen, which includes prostitution, dope, weapons, etc. Wiseguys tend to hang at certain places, planning their jobs, be they housebreaks, jewelry, hijackings of trucks with goods, whatever. Also, there are prostitutes run out of certain joints or queers concentrated in a place or dope peddled under a certain bar, whether it be pot or whatever it is
.

And so as a detective you are in constant contact with the proprietors of these places, keeping an eye out for whatever it is, and in many cases, I would say most cases, the owner is doing a decent job at running a clean place. Some will have prostitution or whatever but in most joints if there is something going on, it is under the owner’s nose but not the owner actually doing it. It may just be a handful of wiseguys hang at a particular place and do their business there but have no connection with the owner other than that they know him
.

A good detective knows what’s happening where. A good detective will protect a bar owner from the bad apples. Should a guy have his place shut down because you have some punks selling five dollar bags out of the back, by the pinball machines? Or should a guy be closed because some guy gets ten dollars of action in the booth? Or lose a license because someone divides up the loot from a hotel job at the Copley Plaza? No
.

And so, many of these men who own such establishments are grateful to detectives, and as with a beat
,
they offer presents at Christmas. But these presents aren’t pies or a fifth. These presents are cash. It started out around twenty-five, fifty bucks, but then over time it would become a hundred and then more
.

Why did I accept this money? Because everyone else did it. All the detectives in my area. Can you understand this: To not take it would have been a much, much bigger deal than taking it. It would have meant you were an outcast, disliked by all. And these club owners were genuinely grateful for what we had done for them. They would call, and whenever necessary we would weed out a bad element
.

But as time went by I began to feel uneasy about this. There would be money handed to me in an envelope by another detective from a bar owner who I had never met in my life, never mind helped out in any way. It got to a point where it was almost as though there was a billing system and each owner would be told to pay so much at Christmas, and they would do that and the money would be distributed to each man in the area. And then someone came up with the idea of doing the same thing in summer for summer vacation. It all became clear to me one night when I’m down on Boylston out behind Fenway Park and there’s a ball game and the owner of a joint maybe had a couple of belts in him and he starts screamin’ at me about the thievin’ cops and whatnot and I calm him down and it’s very clear that he has no desire to pay this money whatsoever and is doing it because he believes if he doesn’t do it he’s got problems with the BPD
.

That caused me to do some thinking about the
situation, really to think it through, for the first time ever. Until then I had just gone along like everyone else and it had started small and built and it was just the way things were done
.

And by this point it was no longer personal, no longer Boschetto himself handing me a fifth two days before Christmas. It was you collect an envelope from this guy on Landsdowne and this guy on Boylston and you distribute the contents to the other detectives and it was a system. And it was all of a sudden real money—two hundred, three hundred per man from each of a half dozen or more bar owners—and all of a sudden you’re getting twelve hundred, fifteen hundred bucks at Christmas and then maybe another eight hundred in the summer
.

I’m sorry to say, this went on for years. But then one day I woke up and wanted out. I just decided one day that it wasn’t right and I couldn’t do it anymore. And I went to a couple of guys and told them, “Cut me out from now on,” and they were very concerned and not at all comfortable with that. But they knew me and they knew there was no agenda here, that my mouth was closed, and so I took myself out of it. That was eight months before the FBI showed up
.

Probably you know the whole story by now, from reading the newspaper files or hearing from people. I’m sure someone told you that that was the day when I happened to be going to this joint to interview the owner, Fahey, about a stabbing the Saturday night before. It was the Monday before Christmas, and one of the guys grabs me before I go over and asks if I’ll bring an envelope back. The snow was coming down and
the driving was lousy and he didn’t want to have to go out and I was going anyway. And I was not at all comfortable but I thought, what the hell, it’s not a big deal
.

And so I interview the guy and he gives me the envelope and I stuff it in the pocket of my raincoat, a London Fog, and I walk outside and there’s three FBI agents and they grab me and search me and cuff me and take me to their office and begin questioning me and that was the beginning of the end. From that day until this, and it’s been eleven months now, it hasn’t let up. Hardly a day goes by that I’m not in the newspaper. For months my picture was on TV every night
.

The newspapers talked about the systemic corruption and the massive FBI investigation and there were rumors that the entire command staff would be indicted, brought down, but none of that came true of course, for one simple reason: I wouldn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t do it. Too many of these guys, the detectives and patrolmen, were my friends. What was I going to do, sit down and tell some little asshole from Harvard Law School that “yeah, they’re all crooked ’cause they took a turkey at Christmas”? They were insufferable, relentless. It was as though there was evil incarnate on the force and I was the symbol of it. And they offered me every conceivable deal in the book, all amounting to “rat on your friends and you walk.”

Son, I cannot do it. These were my friends. These were people I grew up with, had worked with, been in jams with. Good men who had gone along with the system. And I was going to be the one to ruin them? Cause them to be indicted and put on trial and disgraced?

I can’t do it. I just cannot.

And so I won’t
.

But that is not to say that these are all good men, because they are not. I don’t know about anyone beyond my small group of nine detectives, nine men I know for certain have been receiving money. And I would put seven of them in the same category as myself
.

And I would not blame you if you were skeptical of your dad saying, “Well, yeah, I used to take the envelopes but I don’t anymore, son, because I’ve seen the light.” I don’t blame you a bit. That’s why I’m giving you two names of guys who you can go and talk with privately. Ask them about me. Ask them whether I stopped taking the dough. They know. The two men are: Ray Murphy, who lives on Joyce Kilmer Road in West Roxbury, a brown house on the left toward the end; and Eddie Quinlan, who also lives in West Roxbury, up on Oriole Street
.

I don’t know what you’ll end up doing, and maybe you’ll run as far from the BPD as you can go, and probably you’ll go to medical school because you’ve been so goddamned smart since you were a little kid, reading at age four and whatnot. But I have a funny feeling that possibly you might end up a cop. Maybe it’s in the blood, I don’t know. And if you are, I know you’ll be a good one
.

But I’m off track here
.

All that matters now to me is you and your future. My lawyer figures I’ll get three years and have to serve one. Being a cop in prison, a nasty federal place, will not be pleasant. But I can handle it. I can handle anything because I know that my ultimate responsibility is to be there for you, and I will. I will serve my time and
then that will be that and I’ll get some kind of job and we’ll have a grand life together
.

The worst thing about this to me is that you will now grow up known by some as not just Jackie Devlin, but as Jackie Devlin son of Jock Devlin, the crooked cop, the cop who went to prison. I am sorry for that. But I will make it up to you
.

If you are reading this, then that means I am gone. How strange this is to write this. If you ever read this I want you to know that your father is out there somewhere and that he loves you with all his heart
.

Dad

    Jack sat in the stillness of the Arch Street chapel. He held the letter in both his hands, staring down at the pages yet not seeing anything, not seeing the paper or the writing, but focusing instead on an image in his head of his father’s face, a beefy, smiling face. A joyful face.