The Strangler (11 page)

18

Boston Homicide. BPD Headquarters, second floor. Friday, December 27, 1963, 10:30
A
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M
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A dozen or so detectives clustered by the wall peering into a one-way mirror. The mirror looked into the Homicide commander’s office, a small space—a desk, a few chairs, a low bookcase—where important interviews usually took place, since there was no formal interview room. Unfortunately the glass was only big enough for two or three guys to look through comfortably (inside the office, the window was disguised as a discreet little framed mirror). So the detectives had arranged themselves just so, craning, like kids watching a ball game through a hole in the fence. At the front of the crowd was Brendan Conroy’s big slab of a face. Conroy was second in command at Boston Homicide. Michael Daley’s face was there too, peering down a narrow sight path through the crowd, through the glass, to the back quarter of Arthur Nast’s head. Next to Michael in the crowd was a Homicide detective named Tom Hart, who had been one of Joe Senior’s favorites. Tom Hart was bald and puff-bellied and decent. There was an unmistakable significance, Michael thought, in the way Hart had positioned himself next to Michael. The implication was that Joe Senior’s son could never really be an outsider here. Through the glass, inside the commander’s office, seated at the desk, was George Wamsley.

They were all eager to know the same thing: Was it possible this bug-eyed bald-headed towering mental case might actually be the Strangler?

Nast had managed to stay on the run for five days after the attack on the girl in the alley. He was discovered sleeping next to a furnace in the basement of an apartment building on Hemenway Street. The janitor who found Nast thought he might have been staying there awhile; he had made a bed out of oily rags and old blankets scrounged from the storage bins in the basement. He had also left an enormous turd on the floor. It reared up like a coiled cobra, which disturbed the janitor much more than the possibility that the Mad Strangler had nested in his building (“Who’s gonna pick that thing up? I’m not gonna pick that thing up…”). When the cops came down into the basement, Nast blurted, “I know what this is about” and “It’s about that girl.” He gathered up a few of his things from the floor, crammed them into his pockets, and submitted to the handcuffs. He was taken straight to BPD Homicide.

Why George Wamsley decided to conduct the interrogation himself was a mystery to the assembled sergeants and detectives from Boston. As far as anyone knew, Wamsley had never interrogated a suspect in a homicide or, for that matter, a jaywalking. It was arrogance, pure and simple, that was the consensus. Typical Wamsley. Typical of the whole farcical Strangler Bureau, which was disdained within Boston PD as a political stunt designed to turn Alvan Byron from politician to hero and thus to governor. Once the halo was fitted to Byron’s nappy head, he would no doubt lose all interest in the city and its murders. Now, as Wamsley’s interview stretched into its second ineffectual hour, there was a sinking feeling in the room that Wamsley would cost them their only chance to question Arthur Nast. From here Nast would be booked, then taken to the Boston Municipal Court to be arraigned on two life felonies—assault with intent to rape on the girl in the alley and assault with intent to murder on Joe—whereupon he would be appointed a lawyer. That, no doubt, would be the end of the interrogations. With each futile question from Wamsley, the cops’ frustration grew.

Brendan Conroy groaned, sniffed, shook his head, rolled his eyes heavenward.
Lord, save us from amateurs.

Wamsley: “The girl in the alley, where did you first see her?”

Nast: “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Shrug.

“Was she walking?”

“I guess.”

“And you thought she was attractive.”

“Probably.”

“Did you know her? Before that night, I mean.”

“No.”

“Well, how did you approach her, what did you say?”

“I didn’t say nothing, I just…”

“You just what?”

“I don’t know, I just—We were kissing.”

“And you wanted to have…sexual relations with her?”

“I guess.”

“Did she want to kiss you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not the way she tells it.”

Shrug. No answer. Nast bowed his head, waiting for the next question. He was no genius, but he had the sensible instinct to ball up like a sow bug until the danger passed.

“Did she like it when you put your hands on her neck?”

“I guess so. Ask her.”

“I did. She said she was screaming.”

“Was she?”

“Was she? A policeman heard her three blocks away!”

Shrug.

Wamsley massaged the back of his neck. “Arthur, have you heard of the Strangler?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“No.”

Wamsley said, a little helplessly, “Well, I find that hard to believe, Arthur.”

Standing among the Homicide detectives, Michael felt his sympathies streaming toward them. Lord, save us from amateurs. But the sight of Brendan Conroy’s massive Easter Island head, his back puffing with contemptuous sighs, jerked Michael back to Wamsley’s side. What was Conroy up to? What possible advantage could there be in undermining Wamsley now? Michael tried to force his attention back to the interview, but he could not pull his eyes away from the silver back of Conroy’s head, the plush of thick hair sheared close to the scalp, and he felt himself start to seethe. It was as if a key had been turned and a little engine inside him began to grumble. Michael had not always disliked Brendan Conroy. When Conroy and Joe Senior had been partners for years, Michael had regarded him as a sort of laughing rogue uncle, the guy you could count on to spill his drink on the tablecloth or tell a dirty joke to Aunt Theresa the nun. But now it was a struggle to control his distaste. True to his self-critical nature, Michael found a way to extract guilt and self-reproach from the situation; he rebuked himself for his lack of self-possession. But the thing was loose in him now, and working with Conroy only fed it.

So when Conroy snorted one time too many at the lack of progress, Michael snapped, “Give him a fucking chance.”

The profanity gave away a little too much. The others turned to look.

“Just give him a chance,” Michael repeated, more meekly.

Wamsley’s mistake was in presuming that interrogation was a sort of debate, in which facts and logic count. Wamsley was clever and intelligent and correct, Nast was none of these; therefore, Wamsley must win. The A.G. was not prepared for a suspect who simply turtled, refusing to hear logic or acknowledge obvious facts, refusing to respond in any meaningful way. Unfortunately everyone on the opposite side of that mirror knew what Wamsley did not: a real-world interrogation was not a short, intense grilling that climaxed in a tearful confession to the crime; more often it was a very long conversation during which a wary, exhausted suspect let slip a single tiny clue. It was about noticing the seemingly insignificant detail—the fact a suspect should not have known, or the one he got wrong in some small, telling way, or the inconsistency between one statement and another. It was about the needle in the haystack. The best interrogator did not expect to walk out with a full confession. Murder confessions—common as pennies in movies and TV shows—never happened in real life. So the good interrogator just wanted the suspect to “give him something.” By those standards, Wamsley’s Q&A was painful to watch.

Wamsley hung in with Nast for another half hour or so. When he emerged, he had extracted some superfluous, arguably incriminating statements about the attack on the girl and on Joe—a bulletproof case already, with two unimpeachable victim-witnesses—but nothing on the Strangler murders. He was sheepish in front of the assembled cops, but buoyed to see Michael there.

“Well.” Wamsley sighed toward Michael. “I guess that’s it, then.”

“George, come here, we need to talk.”

Michael huddled with his boss at the opposite end of the long room, in which eight desks were arranged for the eight Homicide sergeants. Beside the two lawyers, a grinning cardboard Santa Claus was taped to the wall. On a chalkboard, the city’s homicide victims were listed according to date of death. The list still included all the Strangler victims killed within city limits. Strangler Bureau or no Strangler Bureau, Boston Homicide was not ready to cede those cases just yet.

“He’s lying,” Michael said. “He told you he’s never heard of the Strangler; his shrink says he specifically asked to talk about the Strangler. Didn’t you know that?”

“No. I guess I—”

“Look, you can’t keep challenging this guy, you can’t keep cornering him. He’s like a kid. He’s scared. He’s an idiot, but even he knows he’s in deep shit. He feels like you’re trying to trap him, so he’s covering up. You have to talk with him, be his friend, be his daddy, win his trust.”

Wamsley’s protruding ears reddened. He rotated them toward the assembled detectives, who had turned to watch. “Keep your voice down, Michael.”

“Never mind them, George. You hear me? You’re going back in there and you’re going to sit with him till he gives you something. That’s how it works. That’s how my dad and Conroy used to do it. Take Brendan in there. He’ll make Nast think twice. Then you be on his side, George. Be his friend, get him to trust you—then fuck him.”

“I don’t know how to…”

“Just stop with the questions for a while. You go in there, the first thing you say is ‘How you feeling, Arthur?’ Ask him if he needs a break, if he needs to use the bathroom. Offer him something to eat, ask him if he wants a Coke. Then don’t tell someone to get the Coke; go and get it yourself. And don’t put it on the table; hand it to him. Uncuff him, then no questions. Just talk. Ask him about his shrink, Dr. Keating. Tell him Dr. Keating is a pal of yours.”

“I don’t know Dr. Keating.”

“Lie.”

A little smirk appeared on Wamsley’s mouth. An idea. “You do it, Michael.”

“No. It’s a bad idea. My brother’s a victim. I’m conflicted out.”

“You’re not conflicted out. Your brother is a cop, not an ordinary victim.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’d be a hell of a stink bomb for some defense lawyer to toss into the courtroom.”

“Michael, why are you avoiding this? You know the file better than I do. And you seem to know what interrogation is all about. You must have heard your dad talk about it a thousand times.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Well, neither am I. But it’s our case now, not theirs. The cops had their chance. They blew it.”

“George, keep your voice down.”

“Michael, just do it. Go in there and do it. That’s an order.”

So it was decided. Diplomatically, Michael asked the assembled cops if anyone objected. Tom Hart quickly spoke for the grumbling group: “No, it’s a good idea. Michael’s a smart kid. Give him a chance.” Michael invited Conroy to join him, which fed Conroy’s ego—the old cop swelled visibly at the invitation—and eased Michael’s own sense of presumptuousness.

“Let’s do this, son,” Conroy said.

“Yeah, okay, Brendan. Look, I’m just going to keep him talking.”

“And what am I going to do?”

“Just be yourself, Brendan. That’ll scare the shit out of him.”

A few cops sniggered.

Michael took off his coat, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves.

He swept into the office and said to Nast, “Hey, Arthur. I’m Michael. How you feelin’ today?”

No answer.

“Long day, huh?” Michael glanced at the desk but did not sit behind it. Instead he sat down in the chair next to Nast’s. “You want a Coke or something? How about a spucky? You must be getting hungry. I’m going to have a Coke. You want one?”

“Sure.”

Michael walked out, leaving the office door open so Nast could see the crowd of hostile faces outside the room. Nast watched him walk the length of the narrow office, past the eight empty desks, and out into the hall. When Michael returned, Conroy had settled himself behind the desk, and Nast looked like a hopeless dog at the pound.

Michael handed him a Coke, sat beside him, and began to chat. “I talked to Dr. Keating the other day.”

“You know Dr. Mark?”

“Yeah. Dr. Mark’s a friend of mine. He was asking about you. People are worried about you, Arthur. Would you like to talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, we’ll see, Arthur. I’ll try to call him for you.”

At one o’clock that afternoon, more than three hours later, Michael showed Arthur Nast a snapshot of Joanne Feeney, the woman who had been strangled to Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony. Nast smiled briefly: He recognized her. Michael said nothing when he denied it.

A little after three, Nast admitted that one summer he had done yard work for Mrs. Feeney at a summer cottage she had rented in Scituate. He had been living at a group home nearby. Once, she had even given him a ride back to Boston. “She was nice. She told me about music.” Nast leaned toward Michael and confided, in a shy voice, “She was my friend.”

Conroy shot a glance at the mirror, at the cops standing behind it. He gave away just the slightest grin.
Gotcha!

19

In Harvard Square, on the sidewalk in front of the Harvard Coop, a strange man in costume—belted tunic over dingy jeans, authentic-looking sword dangling from a loop of string on his hip—declaimed from Shakespeare on the art of acting: “Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently…” He had thinning, sandy hair and a slash of red on each cheek that resembled theatrical rouge. His skin was unlined and pinguid; he might have been anywhere from twenty to thirty-five years old. This actor had drawn a small crowd, largely by disregarding the advice he was delivering, but then it took some doing to stand out in bohemian Harvard Square and you could hardly blame him for hamming it up. Besides, he seemed to be in on the joke, an intelligent guy, probably some out-of-work Harvard grad—there were some who came to Harvard and simply never left; they just floated around the Square for years—or one of the legion of kooks and longhairs that called Cambridge home.

Ricky skirted the crowd. He slowed only enough to glance at the actor, not to listen.

He continued north on Mass. Ave. and was well out of the riot of the square when he became aware of a black finned Cadillac Fleetwood drifting alongside. Ricky turned quickly onto a side street. The Caddy moved with him, lurking behind the unbroken wall of cars parked at the curb.

A man’s voice called from the car, “You Rick Daley?”

Ricky did not answer.

He had long expected this day would come. Capobianco’s organization had never shaken him down before, but Ricky had figured the chaos would affect him somehow. There was only so much money Capobianco would be able to squeeze out of the bookies and deadbeats in the South End, and when he’d finished gorging himself there, he’d hunt around for new sources of income. It was only a matter of time before a stalker like Vinnie Gargano paid Ricky a visit. Try as he might to fly under the radar—Ricky never flashed a lot of cash, he lived modestly in a Cambridge apartment, dressed in jeans, drove a Ford Fairlane—word had got out that he was making a lot of dough. It was an occupational hazard; you could not do Ricky’s job in perfect secrecy because you could not do it alone. The idea of paying Capobianco’s tax was galling, of course. Ricky earned his money fair and square, with intelligence, creativity, skill, preparation, and hard work. If he was technically a criminal, he was a prince among criminals. His “crime” was victimless, unless you could consider fatcat insurance companies victims. Not that it would matter to Capobianco’s men. They would shark him just as they sharked everyone else. And Ricky would swallow hard and pay, call it a cost of doing business. No sense getting killed when there was a deal to be cut.

“Are you Rick Daley?”

Ricky kept walking.

“Hey, you speak American? I asked you a question.”

“Who wants to know?”

“Who wants to—? The fuck is this? Are you Rick Daley or not?”

“Yeah.”

They were at a corner. The Cadillac eased to a stop in the crosswalk, blocking Ricky’s path.

Ricky stood and waited. His eyes closed briefly, an involuntary wince.
Here we go.

Vincent Gargano jumped out of the car, left the engine running, and stalked around it. “Hey, I want to talk to you.” He stood chest to chest with Ricky, or, to be precise, chest to chin, since he was several inches taller. He wore a blue jacket over a deco-print shirt, both open at the chest despite the December cold. The exposed skin of his chest was lightly haired and a mustardy shade of tan. Gargano’s face was pale and bloated. His eyes were heavily lidded, the irises cloudy like a man with cataracts or drugged.

Big as Gargano was, Ricky had expected more. A giant. He was actually disappointed at the pudgy, dissipated man before him. There were rumors Gargano was a heroin addict. Ricky could certainly have outrun him, but he had decided long before that he would submit, appease, pay the tax if that’s what it took. Vinny Gargano’s physical dissipation did not matter much anyway. He was not feared because he was strong; he was feared because he was ferocious.

“The fuck you so nervous about? I just want to talk to you.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You’re not fuckin’ nervous? The fuck. You won’t even fuckin’ tell me your name, and you’re not nervous? What, are you fuckin’ deaf? Is that it? You fuckin’ deaf, you didn’t hear me?”

“No…”

“So, what? What do you got to be nervous about?”

“I told you, I’m not nervous.”

“I just want to talk to ya, for Christ’s sake. You know what I want to talk about?”

“No.”

“You have no idea?”

“No.”

“No fuckin’ idea?”

“Sorry.”

“You have absolutely no fuckin’ idea?”

“No.”

“How come you been duckin’ me?”

“I haven’t been ducking you.”

Gargano scowled. He stepped back to light a cigarette.

Ricky thought his whole act—the movements, the affected Bowery accent, the bullying repetitions—owed quite a bit to the movies. Cagney, mostly.
Scarface
and
White Heat
. Ricky knew from experience, from his own family even, that actual cops imitate the make-believe cops in movies and TV shows. He hadn’t realized the phenomenon extended to gangsters as well. But here it was, a gangster imitating an actor imitating a gangster.

“I hear you’re a thief.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“What is it with you? You don’t know how to answer a question? Is this how you talk? Is that true, you’re a thief?”

“No.”

“You’re lying. First question, already you’re lying. You’re a thief.”

“I’m a burglar.”

“The fuck’s the difference?”

“I don’t take things from people, only from buildings.”

“So what? People live in buildings. Same thing.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It’s the same fuckin’ thing. Take from buildings, take from people, stealing’s stealing.”

“I don’t hurt anybody. I only take from empty rooms.”

“They aren’t empty until you get to ’em.”

“That’s right.”

“You see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, but—”

“You see?”

“Yes.”

“You guys all know each other, you burglars?”

“Some.”

“How about you?”

“I don’t know any. I work alone.”

“You hear anything about a job at the Copley Plaza a few weeks ago, some New York Jew? Somebody ripped off a bunch of diamonds?”

“I read about it in the paper.”

“Yeah? You pull that job?”

“No.”

“I’m gonna ask you again. You do that job?”

“No.” Ricky took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. He struggled to shield the match from the wind. “No.”

“Who did?”

“No idea.”

“What is this bullshit, ‘no idea’? You know who took those fuckin’ stones.”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. Yes, you do. I hear you’re the only guy that could’ve done it.”

“Not true.”

“You’re supposed to be some hotshot thief.”

“Burglar. Lots of guys could have done it.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“You heard wrong. It’s a hotel room. It’s nothing. I could show you how to get in there in ten seconds. Anybody could have ’loided that door with the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hanging right there on the doorknob.”

“Yeah, but not anybody could fence that much. And not anybody’d know which room to rip off.”

“Look, we don’t have to do all this. If this is about the tax…”

“Who said anything about a tax? What fuckin’ tax?”

“I just thought—”

“You know, you got a smart fuckin’ mouth, you know that? You don’t listen. Anybody ever tell you that?”

Ricky stayed quiet.

“That’s some smart fuckin’ mouth on you.”

Ricky shrugged. About that, he thought, Gargano may have had a point.

“Now you listen to me, Mr. Smart-mouth-I-take-from-empty-rooms-dumb-paddy-mick-fuck. I know what you were thinking: some fat-ass New York Jew, who’s gonna give a shit, right? Only this particular fat-ass New York Jew was under our protection. He paid good money. Know what that means? It means stealing from him’s the same as stealing from us. See, that’s how this works. If you’re with us, you’re with us. Not like you—this guy wasn’t alone in the world. Now if we let someone just take from us and we don’t do nothing about it, then how does that look? What kind of message does that send?”

Ricky waved his cigarette in a little circle.
I don’t know.

“Now I’m gonna ask you one more time. Who did that job?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you do it?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie. Don’t you ever lie to me. Did you do it?”

“No.”

“Good. Cuz the guy who took those stones? He better be puttin’ his affairs in order.” Gargano stamped out his cigarette on the sidewalk. “You read me, shit-for-brains? He better be puttin’ his affairs in order.”

“I read you.”

“You read me?”

“I read you.”

“Yeah, you read me alright. You know, I seen your brother the other night? Joe Daley. ’Nother dumb-fuck paddy-mick pig, that one. Joe Daley. You know how deep a hole that dumb-fuck brother of yours is in? Kind of hole you don’t climb out of.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your dumb-fuck brother’s not as good at betting as you are at stealing—excuse me, burglaring. He’s in the kind of hole you get buried in. He’s another smart-mouth prick. How many of you fuckin’ Daleys are there, anyway?”

“Two.”

“Gonna be none before this is over.”

Ricky smiled wanly.

“Maybe you’ll wind up in the same hole, the two o’ yuz.”

The good news, Ricky thought, was that Gargano apparently did not intend to kill him then and there. Too much talking. Situation like this, you look at the bright side.

“You hear anything about those stones, you let me know, you got me?”

“How do I find you?”

“Ask your brother, Lucky Joe.”

“How’s he going to find you?”

“He don’t have to find me. I’m gonna find him. Believe me.”

Across Massachusetts Avenue, Amy watched the two men. She was not spying, she would have explained. She was reporting. If Ricky was in trouble, then she ought to know about it. She would have given her eyeteeth to hear what the men were saying. But even from this distance she could tell Ricky was in trouble. It was not so much that Gargano was doing anything overtly threatening, though he stabbed his finger toward Ricky several times. Nor did she recognize Gargano. Amy knew of Vinnie The Animal’s reputation but had never seen him. It was Ricky. The way he submitted to the scolding. The way he slouched, the way he avoided the other man’s eyes, the way he fussed with his cigarette. To be honest, Amy was not sure why everyone thought Ricky Daley was such a smooth character. She, at least, could always tell when he was lying.