Strangled by Brian McGrory Read Free Book Online

talking about me. I think this because at one point, the jackass Foley was talking to pointed right at me and Foley said what looked to be “That’s him.” I don’t think they were trying to pick out the guy in the crowd with the most defined abs. This was most definitely strange.
    From the podium, all I heard was more blah-blah-blah, and then amid the white noise and nothingness, I heard a word — or maybe it was a phrase — that struck a nerve. It was as if someone had just slapped me across the face. I quickly dialed back into Stu Callaghan, thinking I must have misunderstood something that he had said.
    “…when the city was in crisis, and he was the one to bring order to it all by cracking that case open like an egg, saving lives and creating calm. He put the Phantom Fiend behind bars for the rest of his dangerous life…”
    My package. My tip. My note. I looked reflexively toward Mac Foley, who happened to be looking directly back at me, a stern look now, his brow furrowed, his eyes cold. He quickly averted his gaze.
    When he did, I got up out of my seat in that crouched way you do when you’re trying to be unobtrusive. The crowd was applauding the senator, who was paying tribute to the commissioner. As I slid past Mongillo, I noticed that he was most definitely not clapping. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” I whispered to him. And I was gone. The night had paid off in the oddest way.

5
    Once in a cab on Arlington Street, I belted out the number to the
Record
morgue, which isn’t really a morgue at all, even if the people in it can seem half-dead some of the time. No, it’s journalese for the newspaper library. I asked them to check again what I had already failed to find, which was any reference to the term
Phantom Fiend
in our computer database of
Record
stories.
    “Where to?” the cabdriver asked as I flipped the telephone shut.
    Good question. I checked my watch — ten o’clock — and thought about how the plane I was supposed to be aboard with Maggie Kane was just touching down in Los Angeles. The plan had been to spend our wedding night at Raffles L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills before grabbing an early-morning connection to Hawaii and enjoying a blissful week of sun and sex at a world-class resort.
    And here I was, the brokenhearted pen pal to a possible murderer, sitting in the back of an idling cab with what smelled like a quasi-eaten Big Mac in a discarded bag on the floor.
    But back to the question at hand: Where to? My head hurt. My muscles ached. I felt like the entire world was a crowded elevator ride, only the elevator was broken and we were all standing still, looking at the numbers above the doors, frozen in time and place.
    “The Hatch Shell, please. Over on the Esplanade.”
    The cabdriver, an older gentleman with a graying ponytail, turned and looked at me for the first time. “Excuse me?” he asked, not so much curious as incredulous.
    “You know, the Hatch Shell. The Fourth of July concert and all that. ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ ”
    “You’re aware that this is March twenty-first, right, not the fricking Fourth of July?”
    I replied, “Can you roll the window down? Now that I’m with you, I might as well fling my Palm Pilot away.”
    Truth is, I didn’t actually use a Palm Pilot, but still thought the line was pretty good. He didn’t. Rather, he turned back around with something of an eye roll and a huff, and lurched away from the front doors of the Ritz, bound for Storrow Drive.
    You see, I had an idea, one that involved exercise for the body and therapy for the mind. My gym was closed at this hour, so that option was taken off the table. Last time I shot baskets at the court near my waterfront condominium, someone nearly shot me, so I preferred not to do that. I was indulging in the next best thing.
    My phone rang. It was Howard from the
Record
library.
    “I’m getting no hits off the phrase
Phantom Fiend,
” he said. He said this in a voice so soft and