The Nominee

Nine

MY FIRST CALL WAS from Paul’s wife, Polly. Yes, Paul and Polly, a favorite pairing of the gossip columnists at the Traveler, the Traveler being the local tabloid, or what the know-it-all media analysts invariably call our “feisty competition.” She was, understandably, a mess, though I’ll admit here that even on her best days, she had more than a touch of Wasp eccentricity — what the less polite might call inbred lunacy. Paul adored her. “She keeps me young,” he used to say with a distant smile. Indeed, she’d keep Bob Hope young.

Anyway, she was flying back from California and said she wanted to hold the memorial service on Wednesday morning, two days hence, at the Trinity Church in Copley Square in Boston. She asked if I would be willing to “say a few words.” Sure: Somebody, anybody, help us.

Then came the calls from a couple of members of the Cutter-Ellis board of directors, each of whom casually inquired about my own career intentions, given that Paul, they said, had always spoken so highly of me.

My politic answer: “I’m in such a daze now I don’t know what I want for dinner.” Truth is, I didn’t know if I even wanted dinner.

And finally, Detective Tommy O’Brien called.

“We were just up talking with Brent Cutter,” he said. “Is he always that much of a nervous Nellie, or is he acting strange?”

“He’s not what you’d call Cool Hand Luke,” I replied.

Silence, so I added, “He’s a bit of a jackass, but I don’t know of anyone who could easily handle the fact that their relative, who is also the boss, was shot three times in the head and killed in the parking lot of their office for still unknown reasons. I wouldn’t be too concerned by him.”

“Good point. Travers wants to come up to talk with you. He seems a little anxious about it. I don’t know what the hell happened between the two of you, but are you alright with that?”

“Tell the prick to come up,” I replied.

“Jesus Christ. This story I have to hear.”

I didn’t reply, so he said, “Fifteen minutes okay?”

I thought for a moment, and replied, “No, give me about an hour.”

As soon as I hung up, I walked out of the newsroom and up into the paper’s executive suite, where my aim was to peruse — alright, rifle — Paul’s office looking for his files dealing with the takeover bid as well as any overt clues that might lead to his killer — while at the same time saving the newspaper. Maybe I should have eaten a can of spinach first.

Understand, the executive suite is nothing like the newsroom, in that it’s civil, even nice, like the offices of a real company, complete with a paneled boardroom, rich, burgundy rugs and antique lamps with hunter green shades. Paul’s office even had a fireplace. The newsroom, in comparison, is like the factory floor.

But as I walked into the reception area, I immediately saw several strips of garish yellow “Crime Scene” tape spread across his open door, and if the tape didn’t make the point, then the uniformed cop standing in front of it did. Time to go to Plan B.

The entirety of Plan B involved me walking over to Paul’s longtime secretary, Amelia Bradford, as if that was my intention all along. Look, no one ever accused me of being one of life’s great strategists. She was sitting at her desk in tears, makeup streaked down her dignified, well-preserved face. She got up and hugged me and we both talked for a while about what a great man he was and what an awful world this has become.

Soon, other secretaries and company officials gathered around, everybody sad and a little bit nervous about what an uncertain future would hold.

I always felt a little awkward in the executive suite, like a young teenager sitting at the adult table at Thanksgiving dinner. In other words, I wanted to get out of there quickly. But before making my way out, I stopped in Brent’s oversized, overstuffed office down the hall. He’s one of these guys who has his diplomas on the wall — high school, undergrad, and his MBA from Wharton, alongside a collection of absurdly cheap prints of Boston landmarks, the same kind of things that hang in the family rooms of McMansions in so many treeless, suburban subdivisions. In all, his office was exactly suited to his personality — completely and entirely without imagination.

When I walked in, he looked relieved that his interview with the Boston Police had ended.

“No problems, no sweat,” he said, standing up at his desk as I approached. “This Travers seemed to be a cool guy.”

I knew they’d get along. I said, “By the way, have you gotten any calls from the board of directors?”

He sat back down. “No,” he replied, and looked at me darkly.

“No big deal. I’ve gotten a call or two. I think they’ll want to have some sort of meeting, probably next week. We should have a talk before then, don’t you think?”

Walking back, I wished the police guard a “good afternoon” and made my way to the friendlier environs of the newsroom, where I snapped up the telephone and punched out the familiar extension to Robert Fitzgerald, the person whose advice I needed most right now.

“Dear God, Jack,” he said in that deep, almost Shakespearean voice of his. “I’ve been trying to track you down. Tell me how you are.”

“I will, I will, but I need to do it in person. Sorry I had to hang up so abruptly this morning, but you caught me at an awkward time. Long story.”

He said, “Of course. I’ve been waiting to hear where you were. I’ll jump in a car and be over there in ten minutes.”

I quickly interjected, “No, stay right there. It would do me good to get out of here for a while. I’m leaving now. I’ll see you in your office.”

I called for a taxicab, took a long, panoramic gaze around the newsroom, at all the reporters madly working the telephones, at the editors gathered in a circle of chairs in one of their glass offices brainstorming the day’s coverage, at Mongillo sitting with his feet up and a receiver pressed against each ear. He saw me looking and flashed a thumbs-up, then held one finger up to tell me to hold on. A moment later, he came waddling up to my desk, flush in the face, asking where I was going.

“Not that duplicitous prick,” he said when I told him. It would be an understatement to say that Mongillo didn’t hold Fitzgerald in the same high regard as I did.

“Don’t start.”

“He’s a fraud.”

I said, “This isn’t the time to resolve or even address it. I’ll see you in a while.”

Fitzgerald’s office, by the way, sat not in the newsroom, but in downtown Boston, on School Street, in a neighborhood of narrow, crooked byways mobbed with shoppers, tourists, and businessmen. One could make the exotic argument that the area looked like ancient Rome. Years ago, the newspaper used to be situated downtown as well, but when the Cutter-Ellis’s vacated the central city for the convenience of sitting aside a major highway, Fitzgerald didn’t want to leave. So rather than lose him, whoever was publisher at the time leased him his own office on the second floor of a brick townhouse, and he’s been there ever since.

On the way downtown, the cab, of course, reeked of one of those tree-shaped air fresheners that can’t possibly conceal a smell worse than it exudes. The vinyl covering the backseat was torn, exposing the foam beneath. Every door rattled at the mere anticipation of a bump.

At first, I looked carefully around for a white Cavalier, before realizing how utterly foolish a thought that was. I snickered to myself, then just looked at the cars behind us to see if I recognized anyone driving them. The good news was that I didn’t.

So I tuned it all out as I looked at the downtown skyline, reflecting on a city, on a life that seemed to be changing like the numbers on a digital clock. Used to be that Wasps ran the entire show, and I’m not necessarily saying that’s a good thing, but at least it was easy to understand. You knew the score. Wasps were in positions of authority and money. The Irish worked as cops and firemen. The Italians ran the mob and the food stores. Everyone else fought for the scraps.

No more. Oh, there are still plenty of Lodges and Cabots and Roosevelts around, but they’re mostly in the suburbs now, commuting quietly to work in unheralded positions counting money in investment houses or practicing corporate law in white-shoe firms. The Irish and the Italians took over the State House and City Hall, and have risen to the boardrooms of many of the city’s biggest companies. Look at the Flynns as a reasonable example. The old man worked in the pressroom. His kid is in the newsroom, and was even invited to ascend to the front office.

The problem, everyone’s problem, is that those companies got bought out by bigger companies, and it increasingly seems that the entire metropolis that is Boston is a wholly owned subsidiary of New York. Bank of Boston is now Fleet. Jordan Marsh is now Macy’s. The Red Sox are owned by out-of-towners who made their fortunes on Wall Street and in Hollywood. And evenThe Boston Record, after one hundred and twenty-seven years of local ownership, is at risk of falling into out-of-town hands.

Mind you, it’s not all bad. We used to be some sort of puritanical, quirky little backwater where cousins married each other for the money, baked beans were a gastronomical achievement, and Talbots and Brooks Brothers were haute couture. Now the city is more than 50 percent minority, which means that blacks and Hispanics aren’t a minority at all, and a simple walk through the shopping districts reveals a booming melting pot of races, ethnicities, styles, and fashions.

Speaking of which, I jumped out at Downtown Crossing, pulled open the heavy, unmarked door to Fitzgerald’s simple brick building, and trudged up the wooden stairs.

When I arrived at the landing, he was there to greet me. We embraced silently, his arms engulfing my shoulders.

“Jack, I am so unspeakably sorry,” he said, his voice thick and raw with emotion.

He stepped back, and so did I. The scene had a sense of déjà vu to it, for good reason. He led me across the hardwood floors, through a single door and into his office. The furniture was all antique. The sconces on the wall were brass. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases were packed with signed first editions from some of the world’s most notable authors. We both sat down, he in a Boston Rocker, me in a facing leather chair.

“Are the cops giving you any information about who did this, or why?” Fitzgerald asked.

I slowly shook my head. “Right now, things point to a robbery, but the detectives outside say they don’t have any suspects yet, and I don’t think they have any real clues.”

Regarding Robert Fitzgerald, he was, to say the least, an institution, and still very much an active one. He was tall and distinguished, nearing sixty-seven years old, with a shock of silver hair that framed a patrician face that is best described as knowing. Indeed, he knew things that most mortal men did not, saw things that few others would ever see. He’s sat in the Oval Office with presidents, visited the private Georgetown and Beacon Hill salons of so many senior government advisers, toured far flung countries with United States ambassadors and foreign heads of state, provided solemn advice in the plush working suites of corporate titans. He is a fixture on the Sunday morning talk shows, his demeanor unfailingly easy and always smart. He is the best representative this newspaper could ever have, and one of the best newsmen I would ever know.

And, if our schedules allowed, every Monday afternoon since I arrived at the paper more than a decade ago, he would share with me his knowledge, his experience, his expectations, and his ambitions. We would gather in this office from noon to oneP.M. to talk about theRecord, about newspapers, about journalism in general, in what often proved to be the kick-start to my week. Early on, he saw in me a talent that I took a while to see myself — no small virtue on his part. Give him credit for a lot of things, but at least grant that he has a great eye. He was my mentor, and he was my friend.

“Well, you know if they’ve ever taken a case seriously, this will be the one,” he said.

We sat in silence for a moment. I gazed out the pair of small-paned windows that overlooked the street below, where throngs of determined people brushed past each other in opposite directions. I wondered if they had already heard of Paul’s murder. I wondered if they cared. My gaze drifted momentarily over his massive wooden desk, rumored to have once belonged to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I turned back to Fitzgerald. He sat in his shirtsleeves with a navy blue bow tie. I said, “It’s a mess, Robert. There’s something I haven’t told the cops yet, and I want you to keep this confidential.”

He nodded and pulled his reading glasses off his handsome face. I continued. “Paul and I met yesterday morning in the Public Garden. He told me that the paper is the target of a hostile takeover. He was trying like hell to fight it, and today was the day he was going to get some answers, but he warned me that it looked like he wouldn’t be able to ward it off. Campbell Newspapers, if you can believe it.”

We looked at each other again. Under his breath, Fitzgerald said, “Good God.”

“You realize, Jack, that you have to go to the police.”

I hesitated, and he quickly said, “Jack, you’re not just a reporter now. You’re a potential witness with valuable information. Your friend and boss was murdered. We don’t know who killed him. You have to cooperate with the authorities, because you know as well as I do that the takeover ofThe Boston Record is more than likely linked to Paul’s death.”

I nodded, my eyes on the floor. “I’m meeting with detectives in about twenty minutes.”

More silence between us, then I said, “I just needed to tell someone first. I wanted you to know. I need you to keep quiet until I figure out how to handle this internally. Not even Brent Cutter knows.”

“You have my silence,” Fitzgerald said. In a more paternal tone, he added, “But you know what you must do.”

“I know.”

I stood to leave. I thought about telling him Paul’s suspicions of John Cutter’s death, and my subsequent trip to Florida on his behalf.

But as the words formed on my tongue, I held back for reasons unknown.

In the silence, he said, “I was planning to fly to the capital tonight to meet with some friends in the White House and on the Hill on the Randolph nomination. But I’m not going anywhere with this hanging over the paper. I’ll be in my office, and I’ll keep in touch with Leavitt and Randolph. Let me know whatever you need.”

We embraced again, in silence, and I left.

Luke Travers walked up to my desk with barely a sound, theRecord security guard escort, Edgar, lagging a few paces behind. He was about my age. His suit looked handmade, though I don’t think I even know what a handmade suit looks like, except that it probably looked like what he had on. He wore a shirt that required cufflinks, which, as I’ve said, is something I’ve never understood. Buttons are so much easier. His facial stubble was even more pronounced than a couple of hours earlier. In total, he looked not so much like a homicide cop as he did a downtown lawyer or Goldman Sachs stockbroker who was trying too hard to look like something he wasn’t — meaning young and stylish, worldly, and smart.

I had to quell the urge to punch him in his too-pretty mouth. I looked up and nodded without speaking.

“Thank you for taking the time,” he said, formal, flat.

“Come with me,” I replied, and I slowly stood up and walked across the newsroom, never giving him the dignity of even a backward glance. As we moved in silent, single file, I could hear the newsroom hush all around us, the reporters staring at us with the kind of curiosity that wouldn’t die without an explanation. I led him into a small conference room with a glass wall looking out over the metro department and sat down at a round table just large enough to accommodate six chairs. He sat across from me.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, stone-faced, my elbows on the wood tabletop, my body slouched from the weight of a day that wasn’t even half over. I had a view of the entire newsroom past his stupid head. He had the better seat because it had a view just of me. This was our version of a police interrogation room.

There were no niceties in this conversation, no veneer of humanitarianism, no attempt at an emotional connection. We were about nine months and a broken heart away from that, and the year could never be taken back and the heart never repaired.

“My understanding,” he said, “is that you were like the son that Paul Ellis never had.” He looked me in the eye, and when I met his stare, his look shifted down to a few sheets of paper he held in his hand. What he said was an overstatement, but I had to give him credit for at least immediately discerning that we had had a special relationship.

He continued, “It’s early, but right now, we don’t have a whole lot. We don’t even have much in the way of theory. We’ve determined that the victim was confronted in the parking lot. He either dropped his briefcase in the roadway area, or he flung it at his assailant. If it was the latter, there’s a chance of retrieving DNA evidence from the briefcase, and we’re in the process of having that examined now.

“The victim was either led to an area between the trucks, or more likely, fled from the roadway to the trucks, with the killer in pursuit. Based on loose sand and dirt on the victim’s clothing, and the imprints left on the ground, it appears he spent some amount of time beneath one of the trucks, presumably in hiding. Ultimately, as you know, he was shot three times at very close range — a few inches — in the forehead. From the blood splatter, it appears he was standing when he was shot. The M.E. is positive he died instantly, and he’s believed to have died sometime yesterday morning.”

I didn’t like Travers calling him “the victim,” as if, dead for a day, Paul had already lost his identity in life, and was no longer known for his great accomplishments, but rather for the violent manner in which he left us. But I was too drained to correct him, and too stunned by the realization that I was probably the last human being, his killer aside, to see him alive.

I was picturing the old guy, in extraordinarily good shape, running for his life in the sun-splashed lot where I had parked every day for the last however many years. I imagined the look on his handsome features, the thoughts racing through his agile mind when the killer raised the gun to his forehead. I tried to shake these visions to concentrate on what Travers was telling me.

Travers: “At first blush, the killer doesn’t appear to have left a whole lot behind. We’ve taken some shoe imprints, but they’re vague at best. The coroner will go over the victim’s body carefully to make sure there’s nothing in the fingernails or anywhere else. And there’s the briefcase. Other than that, we canvassed every square inch of the area with our very best guys, and have come up dry.”

He paused, looked at me carefully, and said, “So the question is, Why?

“Is it a random act of robbery? Maybe that’s exactly what it is, but I don’t think so, because why here, in the parking lot of a newspaper with one of the most prominent members of our community?”

Travers continued, “Is it an assassination? Possibly, but that gets us back to the why question. Why does someone want to murder the publisher of the town’s major newspaper in broad daylight. This isn’t the busing era anymore, thank God.”

Another long pause, during which his eyes seemed to dissect mine. Then he said, “So I’ll ask you, Why?”

I just shook my head and stayed silent. I knew I was supposed to tell him what I knew, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, either physically or emotionally. I couldn’t share anything with him, couldn’t confide, couldn’t crack a window even the slightest bit, not after what we’d been through. He asked, “When’s the last time you saw Paul Ellis alive?”

“Yesterday morning, at about sevenA.M. on the Public Garden.”

He looked surprised. He calmly said, “Go ahead.”

“Before I do, I have a recommendation for you.”

Travers said, “Yes?”

“Get off the case. You do, and I might suddenly turn into a fount of information. But not until then.” I said this in my flattest voice with my most direct tone.

Before I was even done with my helpful suggestion, Travers was shaking his head.

“Not going to happen,” he said, locking stares with me. “This is my assignment, my case, and I’m going to solve it, and any history that you think — think — we might have is just that: history. It’s not going to get in the way on my end, and I’d suggest you don’t allow it to get in the way on yours.”

Far easier said than done, as will quickly become obvious. Hatred can be a mountain, with jagged peaks and virtually insurmountable terrain.

I said, “You’re making a mistake, and I’m going to make damned sure you pay for it.”

He ignored that last remark. “So why did you see Paul Ellis yesterday morning on the Public Garden?”

I paused, began to talk, hesitated some more, and said, “Nothing that I care to share with you here.”

Anger flashed through his eyes. “You can either share it with me or with a grand jury. Your choice.”

“I’ll take the grand jury,” I replied. “Smarter people, and better looking.” He didn’t mention the third option, which was detailing what I knew in the pages of my newspaper. In fact, I was already mapping out my lede and first few paragraphs in my mind, as reporters tend to do.

He stood up abruptly and strode to the conference room door. He turned around and said, “You could help yourself and help the Cutter-Ellis family by helping me.” He lingered for a moment, seeing if I had something to say. In the gush of silence, he walked away.