He shrugged. 'I don't know what it means either. My Little League coach used to say it all the time. Just seemed to fit here. Let's head out. Drinks are on me.'
'I'm in,' Martin said.
I craved solitude and sleep, but couldn't really say no without looking like a curmudgeon. I was the youngest guy in the group, and so was expected to be a part of these things. 'Where to?' I asked, as Martin put his coat on.
Havlicek said, 'University Club. Love that bar.'
So I guess the drinks would be on me, then.
'Give me five minutes,' I said.
At my desk, I clicked through my electronic Rolodex to the telephone number for a dining and drinking establishment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, appropriately named the Pigpen.
'Sammy there,' I said, in a tone as gruff and hard as I could gather, which wasn't particularly difficult to do.
The sound of tinny music was prominent in the background, as was the constant din of discussion, which, in the case of the Pigpen, I can guarantee you was taking place at no cerebral level. As if the guy who answered the phone was trying to play some part in a movie, he said, matching my gruffness with impressive skill, 'Who wants to know?'
'Jack Flynn.'
I heard the receiver hit a hard surface, probably the bar, which I silently expressed thanks wasn't the cradle. After a minute, someone picked up on another line, and the background music sounded a little louder.
'What the fuck do you want now? I thought I made you into some big-time Washington reporter these days.'
A word about Sammy Markowitz: he is about sixty, bald but for a little stubble around his crown. He has droopy eyes and bad teeth and smokes Camels all day, every day, sitting in a back booth of the Pigpen, which he owns, drinking Great Western champagne, playing gin rummy with any and all comers. He has a face that sags down to a formless chin, and all things considered, makes Don Rickles look like an Olympic athlete.
He is also the most powerful force in Chelsea's most important industry-bookmaking-and therefore has the endless respect of the city's many hoodlums and wannabes, the entire police force, even the mayor, whom he graces with a $10,000 bonus every Christmas Eve.
Many years before, I dedicated weeks of my life to researching his bookie network, in a story I hoped to do about the anatomy of an illegal gaming operation. Truth be known, I was making very little progress penetrating the layers of insulation he had built around himself, and was about to abandon the story, when one night I arrived home to my Commonwealth Avenue apartment in Boston's Back Bay and was greeted on my doorstep by what looked like an Italian undertaker in need of a shave and some manners.
'Someone would like to see you,' he said. 'Come with me.'
I didn't seem to have much choice, courtesy of the gun in his hand, so I went, thinking this would make a good lead in a story that I didn't actually have. He brought me to the Pigpen, to Markowitz's table, where I was told in no uncertain terms that I should drop my research and walk away from the story. Unfortunately, or maybe not, he had caught me on the tail end of a night out with the boys at the Capital Grille, and I was feeling the bravado that only a full bottle of Duckhorn cabernet can really instill.
'What's in it for me?' I asked him.
He paused, taken aback. Looking me up and down in a bit of disbelief, he eventually said, 'What do you want?'
'Well, you're asking me to walk away from a good story that I've put a lot of work into. You have something else for me?'
He paused again, scratching at his face and exposing his bad teeth, then asked, 'What about police corruption?'
'Police corruption is good. I like police corruption.'
In a matter of days, he played a critical role laying out a story on a group of a dozen Chelsea police officers who had led a decade-long reign of terror on the community they were paid to protect, ranging from thievery to assault to torture to, in at least one case that I was able to report, murder. The story resulted in the indictment, conviction, and imprisonment of the dozen cops, the resignation of the police chief, and the recall of the mayor. I was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Markowitz remained very much in business. I hadn't spoken to him since.
'I'm well, Sammy, thanks, and I hope you are too.' No reaction, so I continued. 'I need five minutes from you, and I need you in a cooperative frame of mind.'
'What do you want from me?' he said, his tone and attitude largely void of the joy that I would expect to hear from anyone I hadn't talked to in this long.
I said, 'I'm looking for someone, and it's crucial I find him. I've got more than a hunch you can help me.'
'Yeah? Who?'
'I'm in your town tomorrow. What if I just stop by?'
'Yeah? Well, maybe I'm here, maybe I'm not.'
He's always there, so I took that as something as close to an invitation as I'd get. 'Good,' I said. 'I'll see you tomorrow.
Drinks are on you.'
Next I called Diego Rodriguez, an assistant United States attorney in Boston and a sometime source of information, leaving a message on his voice mail that I needed to speak to him tomorrow, in person, preferably in his office. And with that, a day that felt like it should be over was really just starting.
fourteen
Frank Sinatra was singing 'The Best Is Yet to Come' as I strode through the wide doors of the University Club grille and up to the bar, where Peter Martin and Steve Havlicek were talking animatedly about whether Carl Bernstein had received his proper due covering-or rather, uncovering-the Watergate affair. I had just been out in the hallway calling my dog sitter. My first thought coming into this conversation was that maybe I should bow out straight away and head home for the night.
But good manners prevailed, as they so often do, at least with me.
Lyle was there, working his typical magic. Actually, what Lyle was doing was reaching deep into the coldest ice chest in the District of Columbia, pulling out bottles of Miller Highlife, and pouring them into frosted pilsner glasses. Seems like magic, especially when he's doing it for you.
Frank seemed to be hitting all his notes especially well in this particular rendition. It was my wedding song, and to that end, I felt a certain kinship to it, but I wasn't sure how I felt about hearing it here tonight. I guess all right, but the song can't help but bring back memories, fond and sad at the same time.
Katherine and I got married by a justice of the peace in a secluded corner of the Boston Public Garden as dusk settled on the second Saturday of October. The leaves were brilliant shades of orange and red. The air was slightly cool, perfumed with the sense of passage.
About eighty friends and family members gathered to watch us, and after the brief ceremony, we all strolled up the Commonwealth Avenue mall two blocks to my friend Roger Schecter's condomonium, where we ate a catered feast on his moonlit roof deck, danced to a five-piece swing band, and toasted a future that shone as bright as all those autumn stars. Who knew then that just as stars flicker, futures do as well?
The wedding itself was part of a whole weekend of festivity. The night before, at our rehearsal dinner in the downstairs dining room of Locke-Ober, one of Boston's most venerable restaurants, I stood up with three glasses of cabernet already flowing through my system and made a toast. 'I'm a cocky sort,' I began, to some snickering from a couple of tables filled with my wiseass friends. 'I expect to accomplish a lot in life. Maybe my newspaper
