The Son of John Devlin (27 page)

“You’re not being straight with me, Jack.” She glared at him.

He said nothing.

“I care about you,” she said. “You know that.”

He took a breath and looked down at his lap. He nodded appreciatively. He was glad she was concerned, wanted her to be concerned.

Emily grasped herself by the shoulders as though she had a powerful, sudden chill. “I’m frightened of where this is all going,” she said. “Goddamnit, Jack, you know how seriously I take all this. This matters to me. It really matters. It’s my job to find out who’s behind this and to go after them as aggressively as I possibly can and to prosecute.”

She leaned forward, glaring. “I intend to prosecute anyone involved in the consummation of this deal. If I can work my way up from the foot soldiers to the general, I will do that. It’s what I do, Jack, you know that. Anybody who has a private agenda better understand that that’s secondary to enforcing the law.”

Jack sat still, listening carefully. But he did not speak.

She gazed into his eyes, a look of pain spreading over her face. She leaned forward and spoke in a low, passionate voice.

“You should get out, Jack,” she said. “This is a terrible
business for you to be in. These people around you, so many of them are bad people. You know that.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because it’s true,” she said. “You know it’s true. I know it’s true. The pattern …” She shook her head. “A lot of people are going to get hurt in there, Jack. Let’s make sure you’re not one of them.”

“I won’t be,” he said reflexively.

“Don’t be cocky, Jack,” she said. “They’re very smart people. They know how to do this. Better than you and me.”

He was momentarily chastened.

“You’ve done all you can do,” she said. “Get out now. Go to Ropes and Gray. Practice law. Make money. Have a nice life for yourself.”

He scowled, regarding her as though she were mad. “I can’t do that,” he said. “You know that.”

“Why not?” she challenged. “What are you trying to prove?”

“I want to be a good cop,” he said evenly.

She shook her head. “No. You’re trying to rehabilitate him, but you can’t do it. It can’t be done. He’s gone, Jack. He’s been dead a long, long time.”

Jack felt a wave of dizziness. He felt momentarily disoriented. He clenched his jaw.

“Jack, I care very much for you,” she whispered. “Do you know that?”

He nodded yes and felt a swelling in his chest. “I care very much for you, too, Em,” he said.

Their eyes were fixed on each other. He reached over, took her hands in his, and squeezed them.

She spoke in a very soft voice. “I love you, Jack,” she said tenderly. And he felt exhilarated.

She smiled.

“I love you, too, Em,” he said, and she shut her eyes for a brief moment and they leaned forward in the front seat of the Jeep and embraced.

She pulled back and watched him carefully. “Because I love you, Jack, I have to be honest with you,” she said. Her brow was knitted, her face intense. “You’re obsessed with the past. You’re stuck in it. It’s not healthy, it’s no way to live. Let go of it, Jack. Think about all the possibilities that lie ahead in your life. Think of all that you could do, that you could experience.”

She placed a hand on his forearm. “Think of what love could do for your life, Jack,” she said tenderly. “What the experience could be like. Let yourself go, why don’t you? I have great admiration for your devotion to your father’s memory, but, Jack, so much of the love inside you—of your focus and attention—is tied up with a man who has been dead for a quarter of a century. Let it go, Jack. Let him rest.”

Jack sat motionless for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he did so barely above a whisper. “Once, when I was in the third grade, a nun accused me of cheating on a test,” he said. “Her name was Sister Mary Cornelius, and she was a very large woman with a squarish face, very pale, with these cold, narrow eyes. In the midst of the test she grasped the lobe of my right ear and kind of hoisted me up out of my seat and led me out of the classroom and into the hallway.

“ ‘You cheated, didn’t you?’ she said. She was furious. And I said, ‘No, Sister, I did not cheat.’ And she said, ‘I saw you look over at David Gustin’s paper. I saw it!’ But I said, ‘I did not look at his paper,’ and it was the truth. I hadn’t.

“That enraged her. She bent over and held her face close to mine, so close I could smell the starch from her habit. She wore this black, pleated top with a white starched bib, and a skirt that hung to her shoes. Her beads were wrapped around her and a crucifix hung from her throat. It was a very medieval look, and the nuns were treated as though they were kind of mythic figures. They were shown great deference.

“She was so angry her face was tomato-red, and she grabbed my ear and led me down the hallway to the office of the school principal. She had me wait outside while she went in and spoke privately with the principal, Sister Maruna. When they came out, their expressions were very grave, as though there’d been a death.

“ ‘This is a very serious matter, John,’ Sister Maruna said. ‘This is a sin and God is angry with you.’

“I said nothing. What do you say to that? And Sister Cornelius said, ‘Do you understand what Sister Maruna has said to you?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ And she said, ‘If you admit what you did, it would show you are truly sorry.’ And I said, ‘I didn’t cheat.’

“The principal called my father at work. She told him what happened and asked if he could come meet with her that night. He said he would come right away, and half an hour later he arrived.

“When he got there, he greeted the nuns very warmly. He liked the nuns, thought they were great teachers. He asked, in the most respectful possible way, whether he could speak with me alone for a moment. They left the office. He sat down opposite me and kind of leaned forward in his seat. His brow was knitted and he tried to force a smile, but he couldn’t manage it.

“ ‘You know that I love you more than anything,
Jackie, don’t you?’ he said. And I said that I did. And he said, ‘And do you know that whatever happened today, I will still love you just as much. If you cheated, I will be upset, because it’s wrong. But I will still love you as much as I always have. You know that, right?’ And I said I did. And he said, ‘So, tell me, Jackie, did you cheat on the test?’

“And I looked him in the eye and I told him the truth. I always told him the truth, and he knew that. It was a great feeling knowing I could always tell him the truth and he would handle it well. And so I said, ‘No, Dad, I’m telling you the truth. I did not cheat.’

“And suddenly this huge smile spread across his face and he nodded and he knew—he
knew
—I was telling the truth.

“And he went and got the nuns and they came in and sat down and Sister Maruna went through this whole thing about how I had to confess to my sin.

“My father listened very respectfully and then he said, ‘Well, Sister, sometimes there are misunderstandings, and I think maybe that’s what we have here, because Jack is a very honest boy and he told me that he did not cheat. So perhaps we could chalk it up to a misunderstanding and let it go at that.’

“The nuns were speechless. They were so used to getting their way with parents that they didn’t know how to handle this.

“ ‘Mr. Devlin,’ Sister Cornelius said, ‘I am sorry to say your son lied to you. He cheated on the test. He looked at David Gustin’s paper.’ She said this with a real edge to her voice. She was very angry.

“My father said, ‘Sister, you know, sometimes light and distance and vision play tricks.’ He was smiling.
Very calm. Very respectful. ‘I know from my line of work that that frequently happens. I really believe we have a misunderstanding, and I think it would be good for all of us to leave it at that and move ahead.’

“The nun glared at him. ‘I saw him with my God-given eyes,’ she said.

“My father looked at her for a long time, then he said, ‘Sister, I believe you are mistaken.’ He sounded almost regretful.

“She leaped to her feet and shouted at him, ‘I am not mistaken, sir! Your son cheated and then lied about it. Your son is a liar!’

“She said it so loudly that it reverberated down the hallway.

“All of a sudden everything was very quiet. There was no sound at all. For a long time. And then, finally, my father spoke. His voice was deep and very comforting to me. He spoke very deliberately.

“ ‘My son, Sister, may be many things,’ he said. ‘He is not a perfect child, though he is, as you know, an excellent student and, in general, a very good boy. But he is, more than anything, an honest boy, Sister. He is a person of honor. I am very, very proud of my son, Sister. Jackie does not lie to me. I wish the same could be said for you.’ ”

Jack shut his eyes and then reopened them, looking into Emily’s eyes.

“Em, he believed in me,” Jack said. “He believed in me. And you know what, Em? I believe in him.”

T
he navy-blue Chevy Suburban pulled up to the curb as Coakley walked home from the MBTA stop. There were two agents, both in their late twenties, both fit and well-groomed. The shorter, more muscular one flashed his badge as he stepped up to Coakley and took hold of the lawyer’s elbow, the better to guide him into the back of the Suburban.

“If you would come with us, please, Mr. Coakley,” the agent said.

They whisked him off the darkened street and into the back of the vehicle in a matter of seconds. The driver pulled smoothly away from the curb and headed downtown. One of the agents sat in the third row while Coakley was in the middle row with an agent by his side.

“I do not wish to go with you people,” he said. “It is my wish as an American citizen to be set free immediately. Either charge me with a crime or set me free.”

The young man raised his eyebrows as he regarded Coakley. “We’re not able to do that at the moment, Mr. Coakley.”

“What did you say your name was?” Coakley asked.

“Agent Jeeter, and behind you is Agent Hammond, and agent Stanley is driving.”

“You mind telling me where we’re going?” Coakley asked.

“To the Department of Justice of the United States of America,” Jeeter said. Coakley regarded the young man. He wore his hair short, in a crew cut, reminiscent of the days long ago, when Coakley was growing up.

“Why have I been abducted in this fashion?” Coakley asked.

There was no reply.

“Could someone answer my question, please?” Coakley demanded.

“You are being brought to the Justice Department, sir,” Jeeter said. “We have been instructed to bring you there posthaste.”

“Who am I seeing?” Coakley asked.

No reply.

Coakley turned and looked out the window as the Suburban moved swiftly along Storrow Drive, headed downtown.

“You come at night, you abduct a man off the street,” he said. “It’s like, it’s like …” He was going to say it was like the Gestapo, but of course it was not. He wasn’t going to be taken to a railroad station, shipped to a camp, slaughtered along with his loved ones. Loved ones? Coakley thought. He had no loved ones.

Jeeter glanced at him again, this time with distaste. “Like what?” he asked quietly.

Coakley shook his head. “Nothing,” he muttered.

Emily Lawrence sat in her office reviewing Coakley’s file yet again. She’d read what was available and then done some independent research of her own. She learned
that Coakley had grown up in South Boston, gone to Boston College High School and on to Boston College and Boston College Law School. A Triple Eagle. After graduation, he had gone to work for a law firm and run for the Massachusetts legislature and lost. Two years later he ran again and won.

Coakley had had a bright political future. He was extremely popular in his South Boston district and was well-liked by the press. His name was mentioned as a possible candidate for Congress or state Attorney General. Down the road he was considered gubernatorial material.

But then came the investigation into payoffs involving the construction of the UMass Boston Harbor campus. A construction management company hired to oversee the massive project had come under legislative scrutiny. A legislative committee had done a study of the company’s work and issued a report. Investigators would prove in court that the original report issued a harsh judgment against the company. Then, later, after company officials were given a secret viewing of the document, they made payments to two state senators and the text of the document was then changed so it was less critical of the company. Two state senators had been indicted, convicted, and imprisoned for their role in the scandal.

Coakley had been named an unindicted coconspirator, extremely fortunate not to have been indicted. He was in the thick of the payoff scheme but his tracks were so well camouflaged that there was not enough evidence to convict him, and so he had not been charged. Nonetheless, the fact that he’d been named an unindicted coconspirator had made it into the press and been widely reported.

The scandal had a devastating impact on his law practice. Respectable clients steered clear of him. As a result, he had gone out on his own and developed a criminal law practice specializing in representing organized crime figures from South Boston.

Through the years, he’d had a number of close calls with law enforcement agencies. At various times, he had been accused, though never charged, with laundering the proceeds from drug profits (true); accused of, though never charged with, aiding criminal clients with income tax evasion (true); and bearing witness to the plotting of the killing of a rival crime figure (false).

A few years earlier he had nearly been named in a RICO prosecution by the federal government. Prosecutors had charged a number of organized crime figures based in South Boston with a variety of crimes under the federal Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization statute, which gave them wide latitude in charging individuals with various crimes under the joint venture theory. The RICO statute was extremely controversial within legal circles. The defense bar argued that it amounted to a suspension of civil rights for the accused, while prosecutors claimed it was the only weapon they could use to destroy organized crime.