most charismatic prosecutor in Boston. He was never much on the legal fine points, and by order of the DA he was not permitted to try a serious felony without an appellate attorney in the second chair, ready to hedge him in when he began to push the limits of courtroom oratory. But the true measure of a trial lawyer’s talent is winning, and Francis X. Boyle won over and over again, so much so that it became a perverse point of pride with him when it could later be proven that he’d actually convicted innocent people. The defendant’s innocence, he believed, merely raised the bar a little.
That evening — by this point the sun had set, leaving Franny’s office in a dim half-light until someone finally turned on the fluorescent overheads — we caught a glimpse of Franny’s gift when he pulled himself together sufficiently to tell the tale of Bob Danziger’s murder, a tale that stretched back twenty years. What few legal rules I am aware of, Franny broke in telling the story. He dipped in and out of characters’ heads, he threw in hearsay and rumor, he added facts he could not possibly have known, he may even have misstated a little evidence. He was as he had always been, in Caroline’s words, ‘an appeal waiting to happen.’ But the man could tell a story. He must have been a hell of a lawyer, because drunk and broken down as he was, he could still spin a yarn for you. He made you see it. Franny Boyle put you right there.
Frankie Fasulo has to hold on. He has to wrap his left elbow around the I-beam beside him and hug it against his ribs or else the wind blowing across the Tobin Bridge is going to lift him right off the guardrail where he is standing, it will carry him up and over the side and it won’t matter, it won’t make one fuckin’ bit of difference whether he has the balls to jump or not. Fuckin’ wind! There is something behind it, Fasulo thinks, a presence. The wind is alive, like in some Bible story — like God appearing to the Jews as a little sand-tornado or a sandstorm or whatever. I mean, this fuckin’ wind is pushing him in the back, in the ass, the backs of his legs. It is trying to push him over the side. It wants him to go over the side. So Fasulo hugs that I-beam. It hurts to hold the thing on account of he has no gloves and the steel is fuckin’ cold, so cold it stings his hands like electric current, and he can feel the cold right through his jacket, which is just a piece-of-shit olive-green Army jacket with a peace-sign patch on the shoulder. He grabbed it off a bench in the Trailways station on St James Ave when this hippyfreak wasn’t looking. Somewhere there was one shivering-cold hippy cocksucker wondering where’s his piece-of-shit Army jacket with the pussy peace-sign patch, and even up here Frankie Fasulo doesn’t forget that. Ha! No wonder the fuckin’ gooks kicked our ass in Vietnam: These fuckin’ Army jackets don’t do shit in the cold! Fasulo tries to look straight ahead, straight out to — what the fuck is that? — Chelsea, Charlestown, some fuckin’ — place, all lit up, and the whole Boston skyline spread out beyond that. It’s beautiful. He’s aware of that: it’s fuckin’ beautiful, man. He tries to take in the view but he can’t keep his eyes from looking down into the darkness under his feet where the water surface is reflecting little lightpoints from the city all around, and how far down is that? It’s like a mile, maybe, he figures, or — how fuckin’ much is a mile anyway? Can a bridge be a mile up? It’s too far. He can’t do it. He can’t let go of that I-beam and step off and just fall and fall. But then, he can’t step back either.
It is March 20, 1977, 4:06 A.M.
‘I can’t do it!’ Fasulo screams but the crosswind up here is so strong he figures maybe nobody can hear so he shouts again, ‘I can’t fuckin’ do it!’
‘Your choice, Frankie,’ comes the voice behind him, all strutty and cool cuz it’s not his fuckin’ ass standing up here on the guardrail a mile-or-whatever above the Mystic fuckin’ River.
Jesus, Fasulo’s legs are shaking so bad, they’re gonna shake him right the fuck off the little rail he’s standing on. He’ll shake all the way down to that black water. But it’s so goddamn cold he can’t hold his muscles still. Or maybe they’re afraid. Maybe his muscles are scared shitless just like the rest of him.
‘I’m getting down!’
‘Your call, Frankie.’
‘What happens if I get down!’
No answer.
‘I said, what happens if I get down?’
‘Just like I said, Frankie, you get a little of what you gave. Only I tell you what, Frankie, I’ll make you a deal. Just to show I’m not a bad guy. I won’t make you suck my dick, how’s that? I won’t give you back everything you did to that cop, Frankie, see?’
‘I didn’t-’
‘You didn’t what, Frankie? Come on, what didn’t you do?’
‘I didn’t!’
‘Now don’t you fuckin’ lie, Frankie! Don’t you fuckin’ do that!’
‘Alrightalrightalright, I did! I did! He wasn’t supposed to be there! We just wanted the money! He shouldn’t have come in like that! What were we supposed to do?’
‘I can’t listen to this shit anymore, Frankie. You can get off either side of that thing, I don’t give a shit which. Just don’t talk anymore, alright? I’m giving you a choice, Frankie. That’s more than you gave that cop. That cop was my friend, Frankie, did you know that? You don’t even know his name, do you? Did you know he was my friend?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Well you should have known before you stuck your dick in his mouth, Frankie.’
‘I didn’t! know!’
Fasulo looks down again. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Not so fuckin’ bad. Lot of guys died making the Tobin Bridge, that’s what everybody says. They fell off, maybe, and that’s all there was to it. Some of them even fell into the wet concrete and they got built right into the bridge, isn’t that what people say about this bridge? Isn’t that right? Or do they say that about every fuckin’ bridge? So how bad can it be just falling? Who is this fuckin’ pig? How did he fuckin’find me? Somebody fuckin’ ratted me out, some fuckin’ cocksucker, and I’ll fuckin’ kill that cocksucker, whoever it was, only I won’t kill that cocksucker cuz I’m never gonna get off this FUCKIN’ BRIDGE -
‘Come on, Frankie, we don’t have all night. What’s it gonna be?’
‘I can’t!’
‘You can. Don’t tell me you can’t.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Then don’t. Climb down off of there.’
‘What? You mean it’s off?’
‘Yeah, come on, Frankie. Just climb down.’
But the cop punctuates his offer by racking his gun and that sound — metallic, precise, machined — carries right into Frank Fasulo’s eardrum like the gun is right next to him.
‘Come on, Frankie. Your choice. You want me to do it, or you want to do it yourself?’
‘It’s not right!’
‘Don’t tell me about right, Frankie. This is right, believe me.’
A deep breath — the smell of cold, the taste of it on the tongue like mercury — and Fasulo leans forward slightly, just enough that he begins to lose his balance, begins to spin forward around the pole in his left elbow — begins to turn around the pole like it’s a streetlamp and he’s just going to spin around it — and a step forward and there is nothing under him and the wind is holding him up, he is floating, hanging for just a moment- flying — and then he is not flying but he is falling- and falling and falling- and it’s not so bad after all, not unpleasant at all — he has time to think, to feel the sensation — the wind is loud and it sticks his ears and his cheeks like needles — and it’s blowing his pant legs up over his shins and he can feel the cold on his calves — and his hair whipping in his eyes — and his body begins to cartwheel — and the wind begins to — pull off his coat and on top of the bridge Martin Gittens — in plain clothes — his face unworried and handsome — carefully clips on the safety and puts his Beretta back in its holster because it’s all over now and it had to end this way — nobody needed to tell him what to do only his partner, the big redhead with the full-moon face — a face like a big ball of dough, Gittens likes to say — a face they could use for the first-base bag at Fenway, he likes to say — only Artie Trudell is staring with that big face at the spot where Frank Fasulo the cop-raper and cop-killer went over the edge — staring as if some miraculous wind were going to catch Frank Fasulo and sweep him back up onto the bridge.
‘Kurth, you gettin’ all this?’
Kurth nodded. He was scratching furiously at a legal pad, trying to catch up to Franny I assume he was not trying to copy it all down verbatim. Even so…
‘You need me to go back and tell it again, you just say so.’
‘Don’t worry about me, Franny,’ Kurth said. ‘You just keep talking.’
