Authors: Cecelia Tishy
Now the whisky. I let the glass go. “Oh, Scotch on your rug. Jeffrey, I’m so sorry.” The wires groan. Jeffrey glances up,
then back down at the whisky-wet rug. The onetime Boston street tough who wears a suit—will he retrieve the glass and stand
with Wald by my side? How many seconds? Five?
Here comes Jeffrey to pick up the glass, but Tania steps up too, as the wires click and twing. Wald hands me the cane, and
Jeffrey holds the glass. Both men are right beside me, the three of us directly under the frosted blades. I have one chance,
one chance only in this instant.
I clasp the cane in my hand, prepare to raise it up above my head as Tania steps forward. I can’t warn her. There’s no time.
Braced on one leg, I raise my head, look up, thrust the cane, and jump. The cane’s crook catches on the blades and wires,
grabs fast. Tania takes another step. I yank the cane hard. Once, twice, then one last time.
For a split second, I hang suspended from the cane as the ceiling crunches. Cracks open, whole crevasses. The plaster rains,
tumbles, and the room shudders and quakes. Dropping down, I lunge and shove Tania, the two of us thudding to the floor, away
from the chandelier, while Wald and Jeffrey Arnot scream out, both buried in a cascade of plaster and an avalanche of steel.
S
o you crawled out?”
“Not exactly. Tania and I were both winded, but she got herself up and helped me. We wheezed and choked, but she helped to
steady me.”
“Helped you but not her husband? Interesting.” Devaney shifts in the love seat and uses a handkerchief very delicately on
his sunburned, peeling nose, his memento of Orlando. I face him in the rocker, my ankle at rest on a footstool.
“The house felt bombed, Frank. Plaster and blood were everywhere. It was like Armageddon.”
“Reggie, you could have been killed.” His voice is more plaintive than reproachful. “You came way too close.”
“I took a chance, all on my own. It was for Henry Faiser, Frank, my ‘innocence project’ paid off. But who’d imagine a sprained
ankle as good luck? Because that cane was crucial.” I pause for a couple of deep breaths to help calm the days’ long aftershocks
from Marlborough.
“Tell me again, Reggie, how you pulled the chandelier down.”
“I jumped, hooked the wires and blades, and gave it three hard yanks. It let go. That contraption looked ready to crash from
the first night I saw it.”
“What about the frost and ice on the swords?”
I’ve told him twice. But Frank’s face shows his concern about my state of mind. He’s trying to talk me into a soft landing,
as if by repeating the story, I’ll be free of it. It’s probably a cop version of therapy.
“You think maybe a psychic presence was involved?”
“A resident ghost, Frank. Paranormal power came into play, I know that for sure. The Marlborough house has a troubled history.
No wonder it gets sold frequently. I think it’s haunted. Someday I’ll tell you the story of the house and Senator Wald’s connection
to an angry ghost spirit. But believe me, timing was everything at that instant. When the chandelier crashed, we choked and
coughed and made our way out the front.”
“What about the blond-haired guy with the ponytail?”
“He ran to help Jeffrey, who was pinned down and howling like a beast. Wald was facedown in the rubble. He wasn’t moving.
The blades were so treacherous, Tania and I groped our way along the wall to the door. The guy with the cleaver came running
too. Tania and I… well, it was like we were in a three-legged race to the door. Once in the street, we flagged down a woman.
We were trying to talk her into taking us to the precinct, but my friend came. I’d called him earlier to let him know where
I was going.”
“He drove you?”
“He’s a biker. We worked it out.” I don’t describe Stark roaring up Marlborough, hailing us a cab, then riding ahead, like
a motorcade escort, to the precinct house. It was three days ago but feels like five minutes. I ask, “Is Jeffrey Arnot conscious?”
“He’s still too doped up to talk. He was stuck like a pig. The EMTs took him to Boston City with blades still in his gut.
He has deep lacerations. They’re watching for internal bleeding.”
“What about Wald?”
“The senator is in intensive care at Mass General. That chandelier did a job on him too. He’s got a collapsed lung and a bucket
of blood in the chest cavity from severed blood vessels. The trauma surgeon got a workout. Of course, Wald’s lawyers are massing
like an armed camp. It’s gonna be hardball all the way. The prosecution has its work cut out.”
“Frank, I know how you hate to tell a civilian about a case—”
“There’s no exact case yet, Reggie. We got a search warrant for Eldridge Place. We got Carlo Feggiotti in for questioning,
and we’ll look into medical records for treatment of the injury of Wald’s right thumb. If it matches the death date of his
son, we’re in business.”
“And Henry Faiser can count down the days till his release and medical treatment.” I pause. “So Peter Wald’s death was never
about drugs, was it?”
“Sure it was—to a point, because Peter flirted with the Rastafarians. He smoked weed and used a lot of other junk too. But
the drug connection fooled us. His murder seemed like a street killing.”
“And it was. He threatened to expose the waste disposal racket, and his father shot him in the street. We both know hypocrisy
drives young people crazy. It had to be a bombshell for him—his dad, the state’s green politician, being a major polluter.”
Silence falls. “Does it all surprise you, Frank?”
He hesitates, shakes his head. “Yes and no. A guy like Wald is probably arrogant to start with. Then his greed mixes with
privilege.”
“The aristocrat teamed up with Jeffrey Arnot?”
“Why not? Let’s say Arnot first okayed dumping grease and solvents in the B&B Auto days. Carlo ran it. Then Wald bought in.
Why? Because he’s got a fleet of tank trucks sitting parked in warm weather and mild winters. The dumping brought in nice
money, probably everything from petroleum waste to banned pesticides. And Carlo’s still their guy.”
“Though they needed helpers, like Alan Tegier. When his acne treatment made him moody and tense, Carlo wanted him out, but
doubtless suspected he might talk about it. He had to be eliminated.”
Devaney nods. “We’ll look hard to find out if Arnot or Wald signed off on the Tegier murder, or if Carlo ordered it on his
own. Maybe the operation expanded in the perchlorate phase.”
“The hard evidence, Frank, is my sweater, which ought to provide plenty of perchlorate. I looked it up online. It’s awful.
It plays havoc with the endocrine system, wrecks the thyroid, and damages the neural system. Perchlorate is found in underground
plumes and has spread into water systems. And it’s nationwide. Massachusetts is just one of many states.”
“Equal opportunity poison.”
“So to speak. It’s even linked to auto air bags and fireworks and imported fertilizer but mainly to spent rocket fuels. It’s
our souvenir of the Cold War. We’ve fouled our own nest in so many ways. Jeffrey Arnot and Jordan Wald knew from the first
exactly what they were doing.”
Devaney nods. “And young Peter Wald knew too, at least about his father.”
I shift my leg on the stool. “But how did they get away with dumping for so long? Surely, Boston tests its sewer water. What
about the EPA?”
Devaney rolls his shoulders, loosens his tie. “Bureaucracies and budgets, Reggie. Agencies are understaffed, and people do
what they can with skeleton crews and thin resources. Here in town, there’s two agencies, the Water and Sewer Commission and
the state Water Resources Authority. They’re obliged to test drainage discharges in representative areas.”
“But not everywhere?” He shakes his head no. “How about reported sickness? Or deaths?”
“We’ll try to get the Environmental Strike Team of the Public Health Commission on this. But, Reggie, you know how these cases
play out. A cancer cluster isn’t proof. Hot spots aren’t definite. And don’t think I’m blowing you off. I’m mad as hell we
missed our cue years ago.” He reaches for his Tums.
“Will the Eldridge arson and murder be investigated now?”
“Believe it.” Devaney chews the tablets and pats his tender nose. “I don’t want to get ahead of things, but if Carlo Feggiotti
cuts a deal with the prosecutor, we can go after Arnot hard and heavy.”
“And Wald?”
“Wald for sure.”
“Do I dare bring up Sylvia Dempsey?”
He cringes. “You got a theory about the skin doctor?”
“Yes, but I now suspect Wald. A high-profile love triangle would be too messy for an ambitious politician. A man who’d kill
his son for jeopardizing his career wouldn’t hesitate to bludgeon a lover if she pressured him into making her Mrs. Lieutenant
Governor. And Sylvia was ambitious.”
“Spoken like a true rocking-chair deputy.”
“Spoken like a woman thrilled to think Henry Faiser will be free.” In fact, the mental image of Faiser’s hands unshackled
soothes and excites me at once. “How long before Faiser is released, Frank? What’s the time frame?”
“A while, Reggie. The system grinds at its own pace.”
“Promise you’ll stay with it. Promise me Faiser will be your top priority even if another tabloid-size crime erupts.” I give
him my hardest stare.
He meets my gaze. “It’s a deal. You can remind me.”
“Nag?”
“Nag. But I don’t want you in harm’s way. I don’t like the look of that ankle.”
“It’s healing nicely. I’ll be fine. I have my daughter’s gallery show to attend, and lunch with a Red Hat friend.”
“Red Hat? A communist organization?”
“Try spunky women who speak their mind. Also, Frank, a social life to move from a back burner to the front. Who knows, maybe
a new flame …” Though the Hong Kong/Cairo postcard man still hasn’t called.
“I’m thinking flames too, Reggie, back and front burners, restaurant kitchens. The big heat.”
“That’s where I want to be, Frank, in the heat.”
He blinks. I blink back. Then we laugh.
The author wishes to acknowledge the use of the following sources:
Bunting, Bainbridge. Houses of Boston’s Back Bay: An Architectural History, 1840–1917. 1967.
Gross, Kim Johnson, and Jeff Stone. Dress Smart Women: Wardrobes That Win in the Workplace. 2002.
Howe, Helen. The Gentle Americans, 1864–1960. 1965.
Howell, William Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham. 1885.
Mergen, Bernard. Snow in America. 1997.
O’Connor, Thomas H. The Hub: Boston Past and Present. 2001.
Pinsky, Robert, editor and translator. The “Inferno” of Dante. 1994.
Cecelia Tishy, a Pittsburgh native who has also lived in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Fairmont, West Virginia, made her home
in Boston, Massachusetts, for twenty years. She left in 1987 to relocate to Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Bill,
and two daughters. When she isn’t writing crowd-pleasing mysteries, she is professor of American Literature at Vanderbilt
University. She has also written, under the name Cecelia Tichi, several nonfiction works on such diverse subjects as country
music and muckraking in America.