The Son of John Devlin (12 page)

He did not move for several moments. While he felt a profound sense of sadness, Jack also felt a sense of confusion, for the tone of the letter was not that of a man who expected that his life would soon end.

Jack Devlin sat back in the pew and tried to relax his shoulders, hunched and tense from reading the letter. He closed his eyes and sought to absorb what he’d read, sought to order it in his mind. He leaned forward in the pew and placed his forehead on the bench in front of him. He began quietly to cry, for at that moment he felt as acute a sense of abandonment as he had ever felt in his life. He cried and cried and did not care about the other churchgoers who looked his way. He cried and he cried,
for although he had come to hate his father, he also loved him and he missed him still.

And he fell to his knees and prayed, asking God to help him gain the strength to stop hating this man who had left him alone so very long ago.

J
ack thought back to his final year of law school and could recall with a remarkable sense of clarity how acutely he had needed to find the truth. Eight years had passed since then, but he remembered it as though it had been eight days ago. All through the spring of that year he’d thought about what to do. He did little school work and found himself instead sitting alone with his father’s letter, reading it over and over again. He read it to understand, to hear the rhythm of his father’s voice.

One night he woke shortly before four
A.M.
, panicked that something had happened to the letter. He scrambled from his bed and opened the top drawer of his dresser. It was there, right where he always kept it. But the fear of losing it spurred him to action. He quickly dressed in jeans and sneakers, put the letter in a thick manila envelope, and left his apartment building. At the time, he lived in graduate student housing, subsidized by the university. His apartment was in a building on the edge of the law school campus, a few blocks from Harvard Square. He hurried out of the building and followed Mass Ave. down into the square to an all-night copy place. He did not want anyone else handling the letter, so he asked the clerk if he could make a copy himself, and
the clerk was happy to oblige. He made a copy and placed both the original and the copy in the manila envelope. He carried it down the block with him to a diner, where he got a cup of coffee to go. He walked down Boylston Street, out of the square, down to the Charles River, crossing over the bridge toward the stadium and the Business School. He walked through the chilly early morning darkness, following a bend in the river for about a mile, and sat down on a park bench facing eastward. Soon enough the sky in the east went from black to deep purple. Then, very quickly, it seemed to Jack, there were streaks of fiery orange light, and then the unmistakable yellowish hues that announced the rising of the sun over the Atlantic Ocean. Jack sat back on the bench, holding the letters on his lap, watching as the light brightened the sky and bounced off the tall glass buildings of downtown Boston.

He smiled. The sky was clear, and he could see it was going to be a beautiful spring day. A day of renewal.

After the sun had risen, he crossed the river and walked slowly back toward Harvard Square, on the Cambridge side. Back in the square, he bought the
New York Times
and read it over coffee and a muffin.

At nine
A.M.
he was standing at the front door of the Cambridge Trust Company. At nine-fifteen, after filling out several forms, he placed the copy of the letter in a safe-deposit box. He considered putting the original into the box, but he wanted it nearby, so he could touch the pages his father had touched.

In the days ahead he thought very carefully about his future path. The federal court clerkship that had once seemed so alluring held little appeal for him now. Joining
a major firm was out of the question, and the thought of becoming a prosecutor held only marginal appeal.

Initially, the notion of becoming a police officer seemed absurd. It was not what graduates of the Harvard Law School did. For it would invite the view that one was an oddball, bring accusations that one had wasted one’s legal training.

Jack found himself in the school chapel praying for guidance. He was at first wildly uncomfortable with the idea. It seemed crazy, yet he kept coming back to it. He would go for long runs—sometimes late at night, sometimes early in the morning. He would loop down around the river, deep into Boston, and then back around to Harvard Square. Or he would go off into North Cambridge, out toward Arlington. He enjoyed these jaunts, believed the vigorous runs, his arms pumping, legs going, helped clear his mind.

It was a singular time in the life of a man who did not socialize much, who preferred to be by himself; to think, to reflect.

It was not a sudden thing, but a gradual change, an evolution that by graduation day brought him to the point where he knew he had to embark upon a search for the truth. Who had his father been? What sort of man had he really been? As he came to this understanding of himself—for it was a recognition of the needs within him—he realized that it would take time. It would require great patience. But he accepted that. As the Chinese said, if it took one, ten, or a thousand years, that was okay. He saw it not as a permanent thing, but as something he would do for a portion of his career. The only course could be a patient search for the truth. A search to understand. And if he was really to understand
his father, to know who his father was and what he was about, then Jack Devlin knew that, in certain respects, he had to become his father.

And so it was, on the day after he received his J.D. degree from Harvard, that Jack arrived at the headquarters of the Boston Police Department and filled out an application to join the class entering the academy later that month.

The records of the Boston Police Department indicated that Edward Quinlan had retired as a patrolman in 1989 and died in 1990. Raymond Murphy had retired in 1992 and, according to department records, still lived on Joyce Kilmer Road.

Jack drove out to West Roxbury as a chilly November mist fell over Boston. He rode out the VFW Parkway to West Roxbury and followed Baker Street to Joyce Kilmer Road. Murphy’s house was down toward the end, a small, brown clapboard structure with a well-kept yard.

When Jack arrived, it was late afternoon, not long before the rapid November descent of darkness on the city. He pulled up to the house and saw a man working on a picket fence in the side yard.

“I’m looking for Ray Murphy,” he said as he approached the man.

The man stopped his work and looked Jack up and down. “You a cop?” he asked.

Jack nodded.

“I always believed I could spot a plainclothes man anywhere,” he said.

Jack smiled. “You’ve got a good eye,” he said. “I’m Jack Devlin. Jock’s son.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ray Murphy said softly as he received
this news. He stood motionless and stared at Jack. His eyes blinked several times as though he was trying to refocus. He looked hard at Jack, studying him, not shifting his eyes, not looking away. Jack stood unmoving.

Ray Murphy nodded slightly. “You look like him in a certain way,” he said. “There’s a resemblance.”

With that pronouncement, Ray Murphy abruptly took a couple of steps toward his house, away from Jack. He turned to the side, glancing back over his shoulder at Jack.

“I’ve got to get inside now,” he said.

“I’d like to talk with you if you have a minute,” Jack said.

Murphy glanced down at his watch. “Jesus,” he said, “I’m running behind. Another time.” He moved toward the back door of the house, and Jack quickly followed.

“When?” Jack asked.

“Give me a call sometime,” Murphy said. “Maybe, I don’t know …”

Jack followed him up the back steps. “Look, you’re not behind, you’re not going anywhere, and I don’t want to have to bother you again,” he said. “Why don’t we spend a few minutes talking now, and then it’s over with and you don’t have to do it again.”

Ray Murphy was now visibly agitated. “Who the fuck are you to tell me I’m not behind schedule when I say I am?” he demanded. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“We need to talk,” Jack said. “It’s important.”

Ray Murphy shook his head.

When he spoke, Jack’s voice was filled with passion and intensity. “Look, you know why I want to talk to
you. You know how important this is to me. He was my father. I need to know some things. Please.”

Ray Murphy was not an inherently compassionate man. He knew that he should not speak with Jack Devlin, yet he could not help himself. In a way, he’d been wanting to talk with him for many, many years. He felt it was his duty.

Murphy said nothing. He went inside, and Jack followed.

The house was stuffy. The smell of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air. Ray Murphy went to the kitchen sink and washed his hands. He poured a shot of V.O. and drank it. He poured another shot of V.O. and set it down on the kitchen table, next to an ashtray with a picture of one of the Boston Bruins.

Ray Murphy sat down at the table. His eyes were heavy and sad. He was fleshy around the jaw and neck, and there was two or three days’ stubble on his face.

“My wife’s dead two years now,” he said, shrugging. “I get by.”

Jack looked at him carefully. Ray Murphy had the look of a bitter man. His face was set in a permanent scowl. He picked up the shot of V.O., killed it, then lit an unfiltered Pall Mall. He exhaled slowly, letting the smoke drift into the air so it formed a bluish cloud over the kitchen table. There were many faces to the city of Boston, Jack thought. And this was one of the classics: a bitter, angry man alone with his drink.

“You?” Murphy asked, holding the shot glass.

“No, thanks,” Jack said.

“So?” Murphy asked.

“So, I was hoping you could tell me some things,” Jack said. “Help clear some things up for me.”

Murphy shrugged dismissively. He flicked an ash onto the face of the Bruin.

“What’s to clear up?” he said. “You must know the story. How could you not? He walks out of that place on Boylston, what was it called? I don’t remember. Anyways, he walks out of the joint and the feds are there and they grab him and he’s got the cash on him and the owner says, ‘Yeah, he was holding me up.’ And that was that. Airtight. They had him. Do you follow? They had him. That was it.”

“And the money was for him?” Jack asked. “Him alone?”

“Ahh, you know, Jesus, there was speculation. The papers day after day, I mean the speculation was endless, but that’s what happens in those situations. The feds have a thing about us. Probably to this day. They think we’re all a bunch of thievin’ micks. So here they had a guy and he’s got the cash and so they say, ‘Hey, he’s carryin’ for so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so.’ They would have jammed the whole force if they could. That’s how they are.”

Jack watched as Ray Murphy went to the counter and poured another shot of V.O. He took it all down at once and banged the shot glass on the counter.

“Shit burns,” he muttered.

“But was it his?” Jack asked again.

“What does it matter now?” Ray Murphy asked.

“It doesn’t,” Jack said. “Not to anyone but me. To me it matters a lot.” To me, he thought, it’s everything.

Ray Murphy scowled and looked away, shaking his head. “I’ve watched you over the years,” he said. “I’ve been aware of you but I don’t really get you. What are you up to? You a plant or legit or what’s up with you?”

“What does that matter?” Jack asked.

Ray Murphy took this in. “I suppose,” he said.

“So,” Jack said, “was it his?”

Ray Murphy shook his head. “No. It was not his. It was everybody else’s but.”

Jack shut his eyes for a moment as he processed this information. “Are you sure?” he asked.

This was clearly offensive to Ray Murphy. His face and neck reddened. “Am I
sure?
” he asked, barking out the word
sure
. “Am I sure? I knew what was happening, if you follow me. I knew what was going on. I’m sure, yeah.”

Ray Murphy paced across the kitchen, upset now, agitated. “You want to know about your old man? Okay, I’ll tell you about him. Jock Devlin. I’ll tell you about Jock.

“Was Jock bad? No. Was Jock weak? Jock was weak. I was weak. We all were. We went along because we went along and because they treated us like shit anyway. And what was a few bucks here or there? They were grateful, most of them. We did the work and we did it well.

“See, we started out small. You get a nice Christmas gift from a guy maybe you did a favor for or kept an eye on his place or whatnot. And then time goes by and you get more of these, and in time it becomes a part of the thing. It’s expected. It’s how it works. And then all of a sudden you’re a detective and you’re in with guys who know what’s going on in the town. I mean they know. They know everything. And they’re smart and they’re careful and all of a sudden you have a chance to have a piece of the action, and they take you into their confidence and build you up and you feel good because you belong.

“That’s what the job’s about, in a way. Belonging. You belong to something big, something important.” Murphy lit a Pall Mall. “So you belong and you feel good and it’s not a problem because you’re in with good guys who have experience and they’re fucking good detectives and everything’s okay.

“And then some time passes. And then some more time passes. And what happens? You begin to feel the grind, feel the wear. It’s fuckin’ stressful. All the time wondering, being careful. You pick up this, and I’ll get that and deliver it, and you’re always carrying an envelope. It’s the most fucking dangerous thing in the world for a cop. An envelope.”

Ray Murphy was slurring a word now and again.

“So we would go along and every now and then someone would maybe say something about getting out,” Murphy continued. “Every now and then it would come up, but it was not a common thing and no one ever did it or came close. It was a closed circle. Very tight.”

Ray Murphy poured himself another shot and threw it back hard.

“And then he went and fucked it all up. Your father said he wanted out. And it ruined everything.”