10
Tony, the world’s most hospitable maître d’, greeted me at the door of Locke-Ober as if he hadn’t seen me in months — mostly, I suppose, because he hadn’t. Life sometimes gets in the way of fine dining, tough as that fact is to accept.
“I was starting to think you went out and bought an oven,” he said, giving me that low-lying handshake that is his trademark.
“I did, but then I couldn’t get a license to operate it,” I replied.
He laughed, God love him. Then he asked, more confiding now, “Everything all right?” I merely shook my head and flashed a smile of futility. He nodded in agreement.
A word about Tony: solid. And another: knowing. He’s stood at the host’s podium of Locke-Ober for forty years, which makes him a relative newcomer at the restaurant, but still an institution in the town. He has seated kings and Kennedys, tycoons and tyrants, always with a gracious demeanor and just the right amount of solicitude.
“I hear you’ve gotten married,” he said. “That will always shake things up a bit.”
I shook my head again and smiled with even more futility. “I walked to the brink of the altar before I realized I was standing in the wrong church,” I said.
Tony nodded, looking away from me, not betraying even a hint of surprise.
“Smart boy,” he said. “I’ve got three weddings behind me already, and I’m thinking of a fourth.”
“How’s biz?” I asked.
He looked behind him into the three-quarters-filled dining room and said, “Can’t complain.” And he didn’t. It wasn’t his style, even if he had something to complain about.
I said, “I’m meeting a gentleman, which might be the most liberty that’s ever been taken with that term, by the name of Hank Sweeney. Tall, dark, and not particularly handsome. A retired member of our distinguished police force. Have you seen him?”
Tony nodded back into the room. “He’s sitting near Yvonne, drinking on your tab as we speak.”
I poked my head around the corner and sure enough, there was Hank Sweeney, with a lowball glass containing what looked like a Tom Collins in his hairy hand, lounging in a chair at a table pushed up against the wall beneath the famous portrait of a woman named Yvonne.
As I previously mentioned, I hadn’t seen Hank in roughly a year, a fact I immediately regretted upon seeing him again. He pulled himself to his feet with a look that was equal parts appreciation and warmth, and as I walked toward him, he wrapped his arms around me in a long and wistful hug. When he finally spoke in that whiskeyed, raspy voice of his, he said, “Like it was only yesterday.”
I replied, “We let too much time get away from us, Hank. Too much time.” He gave me a hard, final slap on the top of my back, and we both took our seats.
Hank, for those keeping score, is one of my favorite people in life. About a year earlier, I wrote a story that led to the mayor’s resignation. In my reporting, I came to learn that Hank, my Hank, had been compromised many years ago in a scandal involving the FBI and the Boston Police. I conveniently left that part out of print. He conveniently helped me with key information. After I filed, I didn’t call him the next day, nor did he call me. A day turned to a week turned to a month turned to a year, two great friends floating foolishly apart. Maybe I was disappointed in him. Perhaps he had been angry at me or embarrassed by what I learned. Whatever it was, all of it washed away in the dining room of Locke-Ober in that split second when we came together again.
Hank had thrown on a sport coat and a tie for this occasion, which I knew he would. I noticed he had slimmed down quite a bit, nearly to the point of being svelte, and I told him so.
He laughed softly, that laugh that begins inside his chest, shakes his shoulders, and makes his head bob up and down a little bit. “Son, if I start looking and acting my age, then I might as well just hang the whole thing up and go back to that pit in Florida where you found me.”
He was referring to the time I knocked on his door in some godforsaken retirement community in inland Florida a few years before because I figured he’d have some information on a story I was reporting. He did, and he helped me, but even better than the insight he provided, he gave me friendship. Hopefully, he was about to give me both of those all over again.
The waiter, Luis, twenty-four years in the café, came over with menus, a fresh drink for Hank, and a Sam Adams for me. “Compliments of Tony,” he told me solicitously.
“Please tell Tony that I thank him for the compliment,” I replied.
Hank and I made some standard-issue bullshit, which felt good. We both ordered the signature lobster bisque, along with dry-aged sirloins, some hashed browns, and a plate of asparagus that I already knew Hank would drench in hollandaise. When the food arrived, I met his eye across the table and said, “I need you on something again.”
“Always needing something,” he said, feigning annoyance, but I could see it all over his face that he was anything but annoyed.
I said, “Was Albert DeSalvo the Boston Strangler?”
He took two big spoonfuls of what it’s worth pointing out was an absolutely delicious bisque, put his spoon on the plate beneath the bowl, wiped his lips, and asked, “Why?”
A fair question, and I say that as someone who generally hates it when my inquiries are met with inquiries rather than answers. Still, I said to him, “I’ll tell you in a minute. First, answer me.”
He took a sip of his drink. He looked down at the table where the breadbasket sat, though I was sure he wasn’t really looking at the bread. Then his eyes settled on mine again and he said, “Depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I don’t really know. I was a junior detective then. I made detective about halfway through the killing spree and was put straight into homicide because they were stretched so thin and because the whole city was so damned scared. My role was minimal.”
“But Hank, I know you, you’re a good listener. What were your superiors saying? What did your gut tell you?”
Hank took another spoonful of bisque, a little more relaxed now. He said, “That’s what I mean when I say it depends who you ask.” He paused again before asking me, “You want the elaborate answer?”
“I want the best answer, yeah.”
He sighed deeply, as if he was collecting himself, then began.
“There were three lead detectives on the case. Each one had their own theory.
“The most senior guy was Lieutenant Detective Bob Walters. He was always something of a mentor to me. He believed that there might have been a serial killer who offed a few women, maybe three, maybe four, maybe five — six tops. I think he might have even had a suspect in mind by the end. But he always believed that the last six or seven murders were either the work of a second serial killer, or a bunch of copycat killers — disgruntled husbands, angry boyfriends. They know there’s a serial strangler out there. They realize if their wife or girlfriend shows up dead, she’s immediately going to be lumped in with the other victims.”
“Did you have proof that some of these were copycat killings?”
“Nothing forensic, only circumstantial. The reality is that serial killers, especially in sex crimes, virtually never dramatically change the profile of their victims mid-spree. The Strangler did. He started with older victims who almost always lived alone, and by the end, his victims were twenty, twenty-five, thirty years younger, many of them living with other people. It never made any sense.”
Luis came and hurriedly cleared away our soup bowls, dropping off two fresh drinks in the process. He was followed by a second waiter, delivering the steaks, starch, and asparagus. Sweeney surveyed his plate, then the rest of the table, and said, “The thing about not hanging out with you over the past year is that it allowed me to lose about fifteen pounds.”