Sniper Page 2

  Newton dropped the tape. “What we have here is a stellar example of a Chinese fire drill.”

  Barry Newton was as good a crime scene tech as there was anywhere in the country. He had a reputation for being no-nonsense and up-front. Houston knew that Newton wouldn’t string him along. If he had something, Houston would get it. On the other hand, if he had nothing he would come right out and say so. At this early stage of the investigation, Houston felt certain that the latter was the case.

  “We got about what you would expect,” Newton said. “Nothing, nada, zip.”

  “Well,” Houston commented, “whoever this shooter was, he definitely knew his business. This wasn’t haphazard—it was planned, right down to the location and time.” He brought his arm up and moved his hand from side to side. “From here they have any number of escape routes. They could have taken I-93 north or south, crossed one of the bridges into Cambridge or disappeared into the city.”

  “We did find one thing.” Newton held a plastic bag with a single expended cartridge in it.

  Houston took the bag and inspected the cartridge.

  “It’s a .308,” Newton said.

  “Same caliber as the rifle I used in the Marines . . . ”

  “As well as a million hunters.”

  The sniper watched the female cop as she sat beside a crying woman dressed in a nurse’s light-blue scrubs. Another compassionate idiot, he thought in disgust. Whatever happened to the cops he knew as a kid in Louisville? Like Wilcox—that bastard would bust your head and place a size ten up your ass as he sent you on your way.

  He turned his mind to other things. Without intending, he started computing distances, wind velocity and direction. His palms were moist with sweat as the need to feel the loving caress of a trigger’s resistance against his finger swept through him. It would be so easy . . . .

  Houston surveyed the Common, looking for Anne. After a few seconds, he saw her sitting on a bench beside a grief-stricken woman. Although he was the senior officer, Anne was more adept when it came to dealing with distraught witnesses. As was their routine, he left her to do what she did best. Turning back to Newton, he asked, “You got anything else?”

  “I won’t have anything definite until we get to the lab.”

  “When can you get me a report?”

  “I’ll be here the rest of the day—how about the day after tomorrow?”

  “I could use it sooner than that, if that’s possible. Like, first thing in the morning.”

  Houston saw mock disgust in Barry’s face when he heard the unreasonable request. Nevertheless, Houston knew he had been expecting it; if it had not come from him, it would have come from someone else. The murder of four people in the middle of one of Boston’s biggest tourist attractions at the height of the season was certain to create a lot of heat fast. Every politician, from the most junior city council member to the governor, would be hot for a quick resolution to this case. He wouldn’t be the only person putting in a lot of overtime to solve this one. “I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s one of the reasons why I like you.” Houston scanned the surrounding area—the brownstones, Beacon Hill and the Cheers bar. In the near distance the gold dome of the state capitol shone in the sunshine. “You know, Barry, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this site was chosen and this was staged and choreographed down to the second.”

  “Staged?”

  “Yeah, maybe our shooter was looking for maximum shock value. Not to mention publicity. I’d expect something like this to go down at a gang turf war in Dorchester or Mattapan, one of the more crime-prone neighborhoods.”

  Anne broke away from the gathered cops and met Houston beside their car. “It looks as if our shooter may have some redeeming qualities,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  She indicated the distraught woman, whom she had interviewed before turning her over to a group of uniformed cops. “Yeah, he had that nurse in his sights, but changed his mind at the last minute.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s her story. She saw the rifle aimed at her, and then he seemed to think differently and chose another victim. Maybe he realized it was a woman.”

  “That’s interesting. But I don’t think her being a woman had anything to do with it.” He pointed to the flower bed. “If that was the case, she wouldn’t be dead.”

  “Well,” Anne asked, “what do you think?”

  “I’d rather keep my opinions to myself for a bit.”

  Anne gave him a quizzical look; it wasn’t like him to hold things back from her.

  In a manner that made Anne think he spoke to himself, Houston said, “I think he has his own code of ethics.”

  “A mass murderer with a code of ethics? I find that hard to imagine.”

  “Who knows what motivates an asshole sick enough to do this?” Houston nodded to his left. “There’s the captain.”

  “A crime of this magnitude is bound to attract all the brass. I wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor showed up.”

  They walked over to Capt. William Dysart, who stoically studied the activity around the crime scene. He inhaled smoke from a cigarette, then looked at it as if it suddenly tasted foul. Houston and Anne stopped beside him. “This is gonna be a real clusterfuck,” Houston said.

  “Ain’t no gonna be about it. Five minutes after this went down the commissioner was on my phone—she’ll be here soon.”

  “She’s not one to miss an opportunity for a photo-op.”

  “Photo-op or no, it would be professional suicide for her if she didn’t show up.” Dysart tossed his cigarette into the gutter and turned to his detectives. “You guys got the lead on this. I don’t have to tell you that we need a quick resolution.”

  “We’re on it.”

  Dysart pulled a fresh cigarette from the pack and lit it as Houston and Anne walked away.

  “Where do we go from here?” Anne asked.

  “We visit Jimmy O’Leary.”

  “Jimmy O may be a weasel, but I don’t think he’s this low. Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “Anyone planning something like this won’t want any records of an ammunition purchase. If someone wants to buy ammo on the down-low, Jimmy will either know about it or can find out who sold it.”

  “There’s also the other possibility . . . ” Anne said.

  Houston completed the thought for her. “Or he sold it to them.”

  The sniper watched the cops walk out of the kill zone. When they were about ten meters from him, he called out, “Hello, Mikey, it’s been a long time.” He chuckled as Houston scanned the throng, trying to see who had called to him. He resisted speaking again and lost himself in the crowd.

  3

  “Hell, anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks . . . ”

  —Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, USMC

  Jimmy O’Leary and Michael Houston grew up together, fighting to survive adolescence on the tough, mean streets of South Boston. They were best friends throughout high school, but when O’Leary dropped out in their junior year, their lives took different paths. Houston stayed in school while Jimmy walked the dark streets and alleys of Southie. He started by boosting cars and later moved on to crimes that were more lucrative as well as more serious in nature—he became a member of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang.

  To the average citizen, Jimmy O was a successful businessman who owned a popular Irish pub and ran a profitable commodity-trading business. Ask anyone in Southie about O’Leary and you would hear a glowing testimonial of a disadvantaged kid who made good. On the other hand, Boston PD knew that the commodities he dealt in covered a wide spectrum. Jimmy O was purported to be involved in any form of graft from which he could derive a tax-exempt living—from the protection racket to weapons and, albeit unproven, murder. He was reputed to make the bulk of his money shaking down bookmakers and drug dealers and through illegal gambling. Jimmy O was also the self-appointed protector of Southie. If someone had a problem,
that person could get a faster response from O’Leary than from the police. The BPD had been unable to break Southie’s code of silence when Jimmy exercised his unique form of justice on any criminals or gang members stupid enough to venture onto his turf.

  Houston enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school. After his release from active duty, he became a member of the BPD, with his childhood friend on the other side of the fence. When they promoted him to detective, Houston immediately informed his boss, Capt. William Dysart, of the background that he and O’Leary shared. Dysart made it a practice to avoid even a hint of a conflict of interest by never assigning Houston to any case that directly involved O’Leary.

  Over the years, O’Leary had become big enough to cover himself with several layers of expensive criminal lawyers and had accrued enough wealth to ensure that any charge his attorneys couldn’t handle was dropped for lack of evidence or some procedural issue. Houston and BPD believed that when Whitey Bulger disappeared, most of Whitey’s enterprises came under O’Leary’s control. Nevertheless, they couldn’t prove anything.

  The Claddagh Pub sat dead center in a block off Broadway. The street was so narrow that driving down it was a challenge. Parked cars, many of which were illegally double-parked, created an obstacle course for driving. Three-storied tenements, known as triple-deckers to Bostonians, were so close together that sunshine only touched the street during the noon hour. The weary houses were fronted by stoops that sagged as much as the tough, tired-faced people who sat on them drinking and glaring at any strange cars that passed.

  Houston and Anne found a vacant spot across the street from the pub and parked. Anne studied the flashing sign above the front door of the tavern. “What does it mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “Claddagh. What does it mean in English?”

  “It means Claddagh. It’s not a thing; it’s a place. At one time, it was a fishing village near Galway in western Ireland. During the twentieth century, Galway grew to be so large that Claddagh became a neighborhood in the middle of the city.” He chuckled. “If you were gutter Irish from Southie instead of a French aristocrat from Wellesley, you’d have known that.”

  “I’ve heard of the Claddagh ring,” Anne said, “and always wondered what the word meant. You seem to know a lot about it. Is Houston an Irish surname?”

  “Nope, it’s Scottish, but there are a lot of us in Ireland. My mother’s maiden name was Byrne—you don’t get any more Irish than that. Either way, Irish or not, you don’t grow up in Southie and not learn about things Irish.”

  They entered the tavern and stood by the door until their eyes adjusted to the dim light. Within seconds, the cop detector in the head of every occupant of the bar was flashing warnings and sending alarms. In Southie, people knew when the Man arrived—it was almost instinct. Every set of eyes in the room turned in their direction. Without looking away, Anne whispered, “I feel like a Jew visiting Mecca during Ramadan . . . ”

  “Being a cop in Southie isn’t a hell of a lot different.” Houston returned the hard stares as they moved deeper into the pub’s interior, angling toward the bar.

  When they slid onto stools at the bar, the bartender stopped wiping glasses, tossed the towel into the sink with considerably more force than necessary and sauntered toward them. He threw a pair of cork coasters on the bar. “You lost?”

  Houston made a point of studying the tavern’s clientele. “From the looks of these assholes, maybe we oughtta spend more time in here. How you bin, Gordon?”

  Gordon Winter, O’Leary’s right-hand man and supposed manager of the pub, shrugged. “Can’t complain.”

  “I’m sure Jimmy’s glad to hear that.”

  “Probably . . . then again it wouldn’t change nothing if I did,” Winter said. “Nobody wants to listen to anyone piss and moan.”

  “Jimmy around?”

  “That depends . . . ”

  “On what might it depend?” Anne asked.

  “It would most likely depend on why you want to see him.”

  Houston looked over Winter’s shoulder at one of the TVs in the corners of the bar. Amanda Boyce was still broadcasting from Boston Common.

  Winter followed Houston’s line of sight. “No way Jimmy had anythin’ to do with that mess.”

  Houston took his eyes away from the screen. He swiveled the bar stool until he was facing Winter. “That’s what I thought when I walked in here, but you being so goddamned defensive makes me have second thoughts.”

  “Second thoughts? The next thought one of you cops has will be your first. B’sides, you can have all the thoughts you want, it don’t change the fact that he had nothin’ to do with it.”

  Before he could respond to Winter’s slight, movement in the deepest recesses of the tavern attracted Houston’s attention. He swiveled his seat and saw Jimmy O walk out of the darkness. O’Leary had not changed much in the three years since he and Mike had last seen each other. He was of above average height and thin as a rail. If not for his thinning hair and the absence of the raging acne that plagued him in high school, he looked pretty much the way he did as a kid. A chain smoker since he was twelve, he had a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  O’Leary slid onto the stool beside Houston, leaned back and studied Anne with a scrutiny that bordered on perversion. “Get me the usual, Gord.”

  Winter slid a shot glass across the bar, grabbed a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey and filled the glass. He set the bottle on the bar and stepped back. Jimmy O raised the glass and toasted Winter. “Here’s hopin’ that you’re in heaven ten seconds before the devil knows you’re dead.” He downed the shot and refilled his glass. To Houston he said, “You, on the other hand, I hope you’re burning in the fires of hell before the good Lord knows you’re dead.”

  Houston ignored his childhood friend’s insult. “How you doin’, Jimmy?”

  “I’d be doing a hell of a lot better if I didn’t expect one of you cops to jump out of my shitty undershorts every time I take them off.”

  “Then keep your shorts clean and you got nothin’ to worry about.”

  O’Leary’s scarred face cracked into what Houston knew he thought passed for a smile. “You always had a way with the words, Mike. If you was ever to kiss the Blarney Stone, it’d crack.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “So talk.”

  “Not here. What I got to say isn’t for public ears.”

  “Gord, go out back and ask Lisa to watch the front. Then come to my office.”

  Houston placed a restraining hand on O’Leary’s arm. “It might be best if we talked alone.”

  Jimmy O stared down at Houston’s hand as if its presence there would contaminate him with a social disease. Houston met the visual challenge by maintaining his grip for several seconds. When Houston dropped his hand, O’Leary said, “What . . . and have every asshole in Southie think I’m your stoolie? Since word got out that Whitey was a rat bastard, informing for the feebies, people around here are a bit sensitive about anyone who has private meetings with the Man. Either Gordon joins us in my office or we talk here. Or you get your ass out of my place.” He nodded toward Anne. “If it makes you feel better, bring the dish.”

  Anne refused to react. She kept her eyes forward, maintaining eye contact with the gang boss via the mirror that backed the bar.

  A young woman appeared. She tied a white apron around her waist and glared. Houston thought she would be beautiful if not for the hard cast to her eyes. At one time or another, everyone in Southie had run afoul of the cops. Houston couldn’t help but wonder what the source of her dislike was. Maybe she had been rousted or one of her relatives was doing time.

  “We shouldn’t be long.” O’Leary slid off his stool. With a curt gesture, he motioned for them to follow.

  Houston and Anne followed him through the common area and down a short, unlit corridor, past the restrooms. At the end, O’Leary stopped beside an open door an
d let the entourage precede him inside. The first thing Houston noticed when he stepped across the threshold was the overwhelming stench of stale cigarette smoke. He believed everything in the office was coated with a brown film of nicotine and tar. It reminded him of his mother’s house. When she died, his father wanted her favorite set of prayer beads placed in her hands and buried with her. He asked his son to clean the ugly brown beads. The surface coating dissolved and revealed the true color of the beads—green.

  When O’Leary indicated that they should sit, Houston and Anne perched on a couch facing an old wooden desk. Gordon Winter dropped into an easy chair. O’Leary walked around and sat behind the desk. No sooner had he settled into the chair than he lit a cigarette. “This ain’t no public area, it’s my office and I’ll goddamn smoke if I want.”

  Houston sat back. Anne took her cue from him and leaned back.

  “What brings you here?” Jimmy asked. “Things ain’t like they was when we was kids. The onliest times I see you anymore is when you’re tryin’ to bust my ass over somethin’ or another.”

  “It’s about the shootings on the Common this afternoon—”

  O’Leary cut him off. “If you think I was involved in that, then things really have changed.”

  “I didn’t say you had anything to do with it. Nevertheless, you’ve been known to deal in . . . shall we say . . . off-the-record ordnance.”

  O’Leary broke out in a loud horselaugh. “Shit, Mike, come out and say it. You think I sell illegal guns.”

  “Don’t you?” Anne asked.

  O’Leary shrugged. “If I do, how come I ain’t making license plates in Walpole or Bridgewater? Both you guys and the Feds been trying to bust my ass for twenty years and ain’t never proved nothin’ yet.” He sucked on his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “That all you wanted to ask me?”

  Smoke drifted through the air like a ground fog. Suddenly, Houston stood up and walked through the door.

  He heard Anne dart after him. She overtook him in the corridor. “What happened?”