Rugar’s testimony convicted Don Stapleton. Clint’s confession was supported by Hunt McMartin and the lissome Glenda. He too was convicted. Both convictions were being appealed when they let Rugar out. Brooks told me when he was getting out, and I met him on the steps of the new Suffolk County jail. The first snow of the season had begun to fall, it was only a degree or two away from rain, and it fell like rain, straight down, and small.
“You kept your word,” Rugar said.
He was wearing a gray tweed overcoat with a black velvet collar. He turned the collar up as he stood in the falling snow. He was still gray. I wondered if his color was connected to some internal coldness, like a gray reptile.
“You kept yours,” I said.
We walked down the steps together, carefully, because they had already become slippery, and turned right toward North Station and the new Fleet Center.
“The nigger get out?” Rugar said.
“Yes.”
“They tell me Stapleton’s got that appellate specialist from Harvard,” he said, “working on the convictions.”
“They’ve got a lot of money.”
“Probably have enough,” Rugar said. “You have enough and the law makes a lot less difference.”
Time in jail had made no difference to him. He still spoke with the voice-under harmonic of some internal force.
“So young,” I said, “yet so cynical.”
“If there’s a retrial, I won’t be around to testify,” Rugar said.
I shrugged.
“I do what I can,” I said. “Alves is out of jail.”
“You like him?” Rugar said.
“No,” I said.
Rugar nodded slowly. “Work is work,” he said.
“You ought to know.”
Rugar made a motion with his mouth which he probably thought was a smile. “Yes, liking or not liking has never had much to do with my work either,” he said.
We were on Causeway Street now. There were cabs lined up in front of North Station. Rugar signaled to one and waited while it pulled forward to him.
As he waited he turned and looked at me.
“You won this time.”
“Yep.”
“There may never be a next time.”
“Yep.”
“But if there is,” he said, “I plan to win.”
He stared at me. His eyes had no animation in them. It was like looking at the underside of two bottle caps.
“I like a cheery optimism,” I said. “It’s good to get up each morning as if your hair were on fire.”
Rugar continued to look, the way you might survey a project you might someday undertake. He stood stock still while he looked. But the low throb of deadliness seemed somehow alive between us, as if his gray corporeal self was an insignificant replication of the near Satanic energy that was his real self. Then the cab pulled up and he turned toward it.
“Rugar,” I said.
He turned half bent to step in the cab and looked back at me.
“I took you once,” I said. “I’ll take you again.”
Rugar’s expression didn’t change. For all I know he didn’t hear me. He turned back to the cab and stepped in and shut the door. He said something to the driver and the cab pulled away in the steady straight-down snowfall. I watched it until it was out of sight.
Not killing him may have been an error.