The Son of John Devlin (6 page)

He flipped to the next picture, this one of him and his father at his grade-school graduation. With his father he remembered everything. He could close his eyes at any time—in fact he’d done so hundreds, no thousands, of times—and imagine his father, recalling with ease the
sight of him, the sound, the smell, everything about him. He recalled the precise timbre of his dad’s voice, remembered how he walked, the exact gait. He remembered so very much and was pained by it.

And in remembering, Jack felt the stab of his most painful memory.

He had been awakened in the early morning and gone from his bedroom to the kitchen, where he would have a bowl of cereal each morning with his father. But at the kitchen table on that morning he’d found his aunt Sheila, a fat policeman who seemed unable to look him in the eye, and Father Hogan. Aunt Sheila sat with a vacant look, clutching rosary beads in her arthritic fingers.

Father Hogan was an older man, heavyset, his black suit dotted with cigarette ashes. The priest was smoking when Jack walked into the kitchen, and Jack watched as he cupped the butt in his hand.

“A sad thing, Jackie,” the priest had said. “Sit up here now and listen to me, boy.”

The police officer scooped him up and sat him on a chair facing the priest.

“Jackie, the Good Lord works in ways we don’t always understand, and last night God called your father to Heaven. You see, Jackie—”

“To Heaven?” Jack said, a look of bewilderment on his face. His dark hair was pressed down on one side, sticking up on the other. The soft, warm cheeks of his face were creased with sleep.

Jack did not understand, but instinctively he knew that something very bad had happened. He could tell by the tension in the air, by the looks on the faces of the
adults, by the very fact of their being there. He looked from the priest to his aunt and back to the priest.

Father Hogan spoke very softly. “Your dad died, Jackie,” he said, his Roman collar pressed against the reddish flesh of his neck. “God took him to Heaven last night.”

“What happened to him?” Jack asked reflexively, not yet absorbing the awful truth.

“He took a heart attack, Jackie,” the priest said. It had been the story the adults had settled upon before he’d awakened.

Sometimes, when he was very young, not yet eight years old, Jack would wake in the middle of the night and think that he was alone; that his father, like his mother, was gone. He would get out of his bed and rush into his father’s bedroom, where Jock Devlin would quickly wake up at the sound of his feet on the hall floor.

“Bad dream again, pal?” his father would say.

And sometimes the nightmare was so powerful that Jack could not calm his racing heart. And he would lie there clutching his father, squeezing him as though his very life depended upon it.

One night Jack had experienced the nightmare and raced to his father’s room, and the child’s worst fears were realized. His father was not there. Jack called out, but there was no answer. He called out louder and louder, running to the kitchen, but there was no response, and Jack knew then that he’d been abandoned, that his father was gone. And he began to cry and shake, and he felt fear and dread swell in his chest.

He sobbed and sobbed, and though it was barely ten minutes before his father—who had had insomnia and gone outside to enjoy a cigar—returned, it was as though
his life had been shattered. When his father came back into the apartment and found Jack balled up on the floor, shaking, tears streaming down his face, he’d taken him in his arms and struggled to calm him.

“I thought you were gone,” the child said, gasping for air between sobs.

“Dear God,” the father said, “you don’t think Dad would ever leave you. I would never, ever leave you for any reason ever. Ever.”

He squeezed his child so tightly, Jock Devlin feared he would hurt the boy. He took him by the arms and pushed him away, holding him at arm’s length so he could see that he was all right.

“I will always be here for you, Jackie,” the father said. “Always. I will always be here. Do you understand me?”

And the boy had nodded and wrapped his arms around his father’s neck and head and held on tight.

“I will always be here for you, son,” the father had said. “I will never, ever leave you.”

And Jackie had believed him.

On that fateful morning, nine-year-old Jack Devlin looked at the face of the policeman, at his aunt Sheila, at Father Hogan, and suddenly burst into tears, for his worst nightmare had come true.

The line of blue-suited policemen wound from the casket, across the funeral home parlor, out the front door, down the stairs, and around the building into the parking lot. And it was there, inside the funeral home, that Jack had heard one policeman talking to another, two men just around the corner from where he stood, obscured by a mound of coats. They said his father had killed himself.

This could not possibly be true, he thought. It was the
very last thing his father would do. They were mistaken; they had to be. For Jack knew that his father would fight to the last to remain alive. For him.

But then, the next day, he saw the newspaper front page:
COP KILLS SELF
.

His aunt Sheila snatched the newspaper away from him when she discovered him reading it. She was a high-strung woman and she immediately panicked because Jack had seen the paper. She sought to convince him to put it out of his mind, but the news was all that Jack thought about. The realization was like a massive weight that suddenly fell upon him, crushing him in the most brutal fashion. It was this news that caused his life to spin out of control. For Jack Devlin felt the worst possible feeling, worse even than the blinding grief caused by the loss of his father—he felt betrayed. For surely his father must have known that the worst thing he could do was what he’d done; the most terrible, brutal thing he could do was to end his own life, to take himself away from his son, to deprive the boy of what mattered most in his life.

Why? Jack wondered that day and countless days thereafter. Why? How could you do it, Dad? he wondered hour after hour, day after day. It was not as though he raised this question in his mind consciously, not as though he would pose it to himself. Rather, it was there, fixed in his mind, an uncovered, glaring white light causing one to turn away and cover one’s eyes.

To characterize the hurt as massive or traumatic was to understate it, for the truth was that it consumed him. His suffering invaded his cells, leaving him with a sense of loss that was like an illness.

It had very nearly destroyed him.

Somehow, though, it hadn’t. Somehow, he had survived. And for a reason. He had survived, he believed, at least in part, so that he would be able one day to go back and look around in that part of history; to go back and understand more fully what had happened.

This was what his life was about now, understanding. Discovering. Learning. He had reached a point where he was in a position to find out the truth. And so that had become his mission. His passion. His obsession.

His plan had been formulated. If it worked, he would soon know the truth. If it didn’t, he would soon be destroyed.

C
oakley, the lawyer, rode the elevator down from his fourth-floor office at 16 Beacon Street, just down the hill from the State House. Coakley, the lawyer, wore a brown suit, slightly bagged in the knees, shiny in the seat and elbows. The collar of his pale blue oxford-cloth shirt was worn, and his necktie, wrapped in a fat, Windsor knot, was tugged down from his bulging Adam’s apple. Coakley felt the pressure of his belt buckle against his ever-expanding stomach, and vowed that upon his return to the office he would take the stairs back up. In fact, he thought as he walked along Tremont Street past the Granary Burial Grounds, from now on he would use the stairs exclusively. That would be, what? he wondered. Anywhere from four to six trips a day. That would make a dent in his weight problem, get his heart going, blood pumping.

It was cool, a gray day, but Coakley wore his trench coat open as he made his way along Tremont to the Park Street MBTA station. He descended the long flight of stairs and felt the wave of heat from under the streets of the city. The screech of subway cars entering and exiting the station filled the air. Since it was late morning, the crowds were sparse. He walked to the end of the outbound
platform and caught a Green Line D car, which traveled west under Boston Common and out Boylston Street.

Coakley sat facing the opposite side of the train, and in the darkness of the tunnel he caught sight of his reflection in the window. He looked pale and drawn, his round face fleshy and pleasant in its way, though hardly distinctive. When he was a younger man, in his twenties, Coakley had been considered somewhat handsome. But now, at fifty-eight, he was a sorry sight, and he knew it. His hairline had receded and there were but wisps of grayish straw across the top of his bald pate. His nose was thick and reddish, capillaries broken beneath the skin leaving spiderwebbed veins of red and purple. Coakley stared at the pale, fleshy image in the darkened window but had to turn away. He did not wish to see what he’d become.

He rode out past Kenmore Square into Brookline. Getting off at the Brookline Hills stop, he walked across the parking lot to the athletic fields in front of Brookline High School. On the far side, past the playground and basketball courts, were several sturdy wooden benches. Coakley took a seat and picked up a
Boston Herald
someone had left behind. He flipped the paper over and read an article about the Bruins’ new cast of characters, led by one of his favorite players, winger Rick Tocchet. Coakley admired Tocchet’s grit and determination. He was a man of character, he thought. He set the paper down and thought that if he were to do it all over again, he would seek to emulate Tocchet—to have backbone; to be willing to stand up and face down the demons. To have honor.

He sighed.

“Sounds like the weight of the world,” said Jack Devlin, who approached and took a seat next to Coakley on the bench.

Coakley looked at Devlin. “Feels it sometimes,” he said.

“Here.” Devlin handed Coakley a brown bag. “Thought you’d be hungry.”

“Jeez, I’m trying to cut down,” Coakley said as he opened the bag and discovered a turkey sandwich and Diet Coke. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s very thoughtful.”

He spread out the
Herald
and placed his sandwich on it. As he did so he saw the back-page photograph of Tocchet.

“You ever run into Rick Tocchet when you played?” he asked.

Devlin nodded. “After school, the summer after school, I played in a league up in Quebec. Tocchet and some other guys from Philadelphia—back when he was with the Flyers—played, too, to stay in shape. Nothing too serious, except everything is serious with those guys.”

“Good guy?” Coakley asked.

“The best,” Devlin said.

Coakley nodded. “So you regret you didn’t sign the contract?”

Devlin shook his head. “Not really. It would have been fun, but, you know, I had other stuff to do.”

The contract to which Coakley referred was an offer from the Montreal Canadiens. As an all-American in college, Jack had been drafted by the Canadiens, who sent no less a personage than Serge Savard himself to convince Devlin to sign. And as much as he loved the game
of hockey, the truth was that he wanted to get on with his life.

Devlin pulled a sandwich of his own out of another bag and began eating. “So how’s your man?”

Coakley nodded. “Not bad,” the lawyer said. “Making progress.” Coakley hesitated a moment, then added, “I think.”

“You think?”

“He’s antsy,” Coakley said. “It’s a medium facility and not so pleasant. There are guys who, you know, would do unpleasant things to him if given the opportunity. So this stalling, he’s not too keen on it.”

“He did it before on his own,” Devlin said.

“Felt he had no choice,” Coakley said. “He had to wait for some people to pass on before he could cough up that stuff. Jesus.”

Devlin nodded his understanding.

“Anyway, he wants to move,” Coakley said. “He wants to get going. The feds will never be more eager than they are now. They know him, they trust him, and they’re ready to act based on his say-so. But they need something more. They’re hounding his ass, to tell you the truth.”

“When are you going to see him next?” Devlin asked.

“Whenever you say.”

“I think it would be good to get to him as soon as possible.”

“I can drive down today. I’d just as soon. It’s relaxing, the drive.”

“So you can tell him that the delivery is about to be made,” Devlin said. “Within a matter of a few days.”

Coakley raised his eyes. “A few days?”

Devlin nodded.

“Where?” Coakley asked.

Devlin shook his head. “That’s enough,” he said. “That will get the feds’ attention.”

“They’ll want a location,” Coakley said. “Something more than that it’s happening soon somewhere. Somewhere’s a big place.”

“That’s okay,” Devlin said.

Coakley shrugged. What choice did he have? He was receiving information from Devlin that was relayed through Mr. Jones to the federal authorities in Boston. The information could only help his client get favorable treatment and possibly get moved to a minimum-security facility.

Coakley chewed on his sandwich, then took a long sip of Coke. Jack Devlin finished his sandwich, rolled the paper into a ball, and stuffed it into the bag. He finished his Coke and placed the can in the bag, as well. He got up from the bench and walked a few dozen yards to a trash can and dropped the bag in, walked back to the bench, and stood with his foot on one end, gazing out across the fields at a group of schoolchildren playing soccer.

Coakley put his sandwich down and sat back. He folded his arms across his chest. He’d been providing information to Devlin for nearly two years and was, by far, Devlin’s best informant. Over many late-night conversations Devlin had learned that Coakley was cooperative because he felt the need to atone for past sins.

Coakley had once been a young state representative with a promising future, when a scandal broke involving two prominent state senators who took payoffs in return for a favorable oversight report for a construction company building the UMass Boston Harbor campus. While Coakley was never formally charged, he was named by
the grand jury as an unindicted coconspirator. That information, naturally, had been leaked to the press by prosecutors, and Coakley was defeated for reelection. Because of the scandal, his law practice crumbled. He then turned to representing anyone who would have him, which meant dealers and low-level wiseguys. Through the years, he had established a profitable practice representing dealers of various sizes and shapes.