in a grassy park-dreamlike, impossibly modern. There were no cars in the drawing; the buildings apparently would be accessed by spaceships. Pedestrians tended to pause before this picture, stumped, awed by it. Buildings like these simply did not exist in Boston. They were too good for Boston, too good for the likes of us. The image arrested everyone who passed, thin-lipped women with shopping bags and gray men in blue suits with brown shoes. They tended to stand there and shake their heads with schoolmarmish disapproval: the ostentation of it all, the naked, gaudy ambition. To the side of the picture was the opportunistic name of the project, JFK PARK, and a long list of credits like the roll call at the end of a movie:
A SONNENSHEIN DEVELOPMENT • CITY OF BOSTON • MAYOR JOHN COLLINS • BOSTON REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY • URBAN RENEWAL ADMINISTRATION • SONNENSHEIN CONSTRUCTION CO. • FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BOSTON • THE NEW BOSTON TRUST
Moe Wasserman arranged to meet Joe near this sign. It was an unseasonably warm day in early April, an early intimation of spring. Wasserman was agitated. When Joe showed up, Wasserman blurted, “He’s here! Come see!” The old man hustled Joe down Charles Street, along the perimeter of the site, to a chainlink gate where a dozen men loafed around a cafeteria truck. A small army of construction workers swarmed over the site, which occupied about a quarter of the old West End footprint, but somehow Wasserman had found his man.
“There!”
“Which one?”
“In the red jacket. Drinking his coffee like he don’t know I’m lookin’at him. He was there. Not the one in charge, but he was there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Course I’m sure.”
“How sure?”
“Listen to this guy, ‘how sure?’ If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have brung you.”
“Alright. I’ve got to be sure is all.”
“Detective, I’m not asking you to shoot him, just talk to him. How sure do you got to be?”
Joe walked onto the construction site with the happy sense of trespassing.
The man looked up. Early twenties. A sleek, dense mat of hair opalescent with Brylcreem. Slit eyes. He was squat and thick-bodied. A white tank top showed off his inflated shoulders and arms. On his right biceps was a tattoo of a red devil wearing boxing gloves above the initials U.S.M.C. Seeing Joe, the kid put down his coffee so his hands would be empty.
“I want to talk to you,” Joe said.
“Yeah? Who the fuck are you?”
Joe wavered, as if the kid’s words had blown him back. He tried to recalibrate his approach. Joe firmly believed in the streetfighter’s code: In a fighting situation, the only strategy is attack, attack, attack-stick out your chest and tell ’em “fuck you,” be ready to hit first, and stay on your feet at all costs. He knew the game. Now this kid was eyeing Joe, watching his reaction. His mouth puckered up in a defiant, kissy pout. The proper response would be a show of overwhelming force. Joe tried to stimulate the necessary resources to match this wop dago fire hydrant, this, this Golden Gloves Guido greaseball gangster punk fuck…ah, but it was no use. He was exhausted and unprepared. He did not have the energy. He took out his badge-wallet and showed the kid his shield. “Watch your language,” he instructed in a stern-fatherly way.
The kid sensed his victory. “Sorry, Officer,” he said, still wearing that lippy little moue. “I didn’t know. You coulda been anybody.”
They retreated to a corner of the dusty rubble-field, where the kid took care to strut his insubordination. Holding his coffee cup, he flexed his right arm so the little red devil quivered on his biceps. Joe had a similar tattoo, a boxing leprechaun, in the identical spot. The coincidence reinforced his sense of failure.
“Where were you the night of January ten, around eleven, midnight?”
“No fuckin’ idea. Where were you?”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Sorry. I don’t remember. Why? What happened?”
“There was a shop over near the Gahden that got broke into.”
“You came out here to hassle me over some diddlyshit B-and-E?”
“Language.”
“Sorry. It’s just… pfft. You got nothing better to do?”
“This is all I have to do, all day. You got a car?”
“Why?”
“Who’s got the black sedan?”
“What black sedan?”
“Four guys showed up with baseball bats in a big black sedan and broke the place up.”
“What four guys? What the fu-What are you talking about? You have absolutely no idea, do you?”
“I’ve got an idea. I’ve got a pretty good idea. I’ve got a witness who IDs you as one of the four apes that did it.”
The kid stiffened at the word apes. “Who? That fuckin’ geezer you showed up here with? Half blind…”
“That half-blind geezer picked you out of all the guys working on this site. Tell you what: I bet he’d pick you out of a lineup ten times out of ten. Put him in front of a jury and I’ll take my chances.”
“So arrest me. Go ahead.”
“Not today.”
“No, not today. Didn’t think so. You got nothing and you know it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Paul.”
“Paul what?”
“Marolla.”
“Give me your license. Where do you live, Paul Marolla?”
“Lynn.”
“Figures.”
Joe took down the guy’s name, address, and D.O.B., and handed his license back to him. “Nice talking to you.”
“Fuck you.”
“We’ll talk again.”
“Fuck you.”
“You want to come down the station and cool off awhile?”
“For what?”
“Suspicious person. Disorderly. I’ll think of something.”
“Fuck you.”
Joe shook his head. Somehow, unwittingly he had played the cool hand. He felt smart-at least he felt he looked smart. He had not said a wrong word, and rather than risk spoiling this little miracle of nonviolent interrogation, he decided to walk away, though he was not sure quite what he had, what good this man’s name would do.
“Watch your language.”
“Fuck. You.”
38
They were like vampires, these Mob guys. They came out at night. Lunch was breakfast, supper was lunch, the workday ended anytime before sunrise. The big boss, Charlie Capobianco, would drive himself into the city from his sprawling oceanfront house in Swampscott after noontime. His workday began at the “clubhouse” on Thatcher Street. Around seven he might sweep into a favored restaurant with his retinue, like a feudal lord paying a call on a vassal. Then it was on to C.C.’s, a bar he owned in the Combat Zone where he kept an office. Sometime around two or three in the morning Capobianco would drive himself home. Hardly anyone knew when he left; hardly anyone was
