The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 18

By TRB

Have you ever been so tired that your senses felt as though they had been beat right out of you? Well that's how I felt the night I laughed at the woman whose husband had just died.

But that was a few years in the past. I was older now and quite possibly an even greater danger to myself. I had a company car for some reason. I had stopped at a couple of cop bars too many. The Mayor of Boston, Raymond Flynn, and his pal, the police commissioner, Mickey Rourke had been making the rounds themselves, and by the time Flynn slid into the booth next to me, I was so caught up in a Fine Young Cannibals B Side, "I'm not the man I used to be," I didn't even notice him.

Hell, I was singing it when the Mayor said hello. But you see, that's the problem with alcohol. You tend to forget who you are, who is with you and even where you are. In my mind at that moment, I was standing somewhere in a smoky room on a stage singing my heart out. And here was this Mayor and his top cop, who was perching in the booth across from me.

The Mayor and I made some small talk, which he seemed to like doing. For him I think it was just knowing that I wouldn't quote him on anything. I would never say that we went out for a few drinks every once in a while. I figured that if I had the right to sit there and drink for three hours, then so should he.

But it was snowing like hell outside on this night and he was dressed for the South Pole, so I knew he was going to ride around with the city plow drivers and get as much publicity out of it as he could. Hell, it was a hard job. In Boston, someone is always taking you aside and asking you this or that and promising that or this for it. And his days sometimes went like that. You could see it in his eyes - whole days of saying "no" to people. Hell, I would need a drink too.

Raymond Flynn would be saved later when someone, probably fellow Irishman Pres. Reagan, appointed him Ambassador to the Vatican. It was a perfect fit for him. And it got him out of Boston and away from all his drinking buddies.

I always made the rounds at the cop bars. I was writing about crime so I figured why not hang with the crime fighters. In theory it wasn't a bad idea. In practice, it could be difficult. Cops who drink - 30 years ago, anyway - tended to get into fights with other cops who drink and it seemed I was always running away from a punch or something.

Back in those days, the cops had a real war on their hands in Boston. They would suffer from combat fatigue, a friend of mine, a detective, was lying in bed at his mothers' house when a neighborhood gang decided to machine gun the premises. It wasn't really a lot of fun to be a cop. And of course they all had some kind of quirk or some off-the-range part of their personality that other cops would pick up on and tease them to death. Practical jokes with cops could be downright deadly. I won't even get into it.

I remember when that punk fur dealer murdered his pregnant wife in an African American part of the city and tried to blame it on a group of black kids. The cops went through the motions with this guy, almost acting like they believed his whole story. It was obvious though. He was taking her to an appointment somewhere and just happened to drive through the most dangerous part of the city. Right fur man, we believe you.

That's how the cops played it. They even played that way with the news media, except me. I knew the husband was a lock. First, he had that creep dimension to him, that no, I am not simply a bastard, I am potentially a psychopath.

The cops got a hold of his younger brother who sang the first time they talked to him. He shot his brother's wife and put a little dent in his brother too to make it look real. But it was just a way for his brother to get rid of his pregnant wife and start a new relationship with someone he had just met. But cops can be wise asses, and they played it out a little, At least that was my impression.

They were getting ready to drop the net on the guy when he drove his new car to the side of the roadway in the center of a bridge and took a 150 foot plunge that he didn't survive. You don't want to go to prison anywhere after shooting a pregnant woman to death. I am sure diving from the bridge was almost a pleasure for him.

He apparently thought the Boston cops were fools. Almost all of the cops I knew could see right through you, read your mind, know you intentions, the whole X Files thing. I figured the criminals just didn't know these cops. Most of these cops were college grads. Quite a few had masters degrees A few had been to law school. You couldn't get anything past these guys.

I remember one night I was driving home after having too much to drink. The cops pulled me over. Might have been the state police, might have been the MDC police, who no longer exist. I remember one of them got behind the wheel of my car and I got in the car with the other one and they drove me home. Mind you now, this was before MADD or any of that. But the thing that got me by that night was they knew me. And they knew I always wrote good things about cops.

Think about that for a minute. Imagine a career of writing bad things about cops? I don't believe I would want that job.

I was a cop once in my own way, a military policeman. I was officially a journalist in the U.S. Army, but back then they made sure you met qualifications for two jobs, in case there was ever a shortage of people in one and they needed you. They needed me to be an MP, so suddenly I am armed and dangerous. The assignment itself was dangerous. The military community was right out of a horror movie.

There were murders, there was frequent and very violent drug trafficking. It was not a good time. And I was pulling twelve hour shifts. One night after an exhausting day of making arrests and chasing people down and actually being shot at, my partner and I were called to the hospital where an off duty soldier had been taken after being in a serious motorcycle accident.

I walked into the room and the on-call surgeon was standing there bare foot (just out of bed, probably) looking at the grayish blue young man on the gurney. He was shaking his head. "This ends here," he said to a nurse. It was obvious that he had been traveling at a very high rate of speed because he had broken nearly every bone in his body. In fact, his body was lying in such a way that only a badly broken body could lie. He had died at the scene of the accident. Suddenly his wife was on my back. She was screaming and she was beating on me.

"What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" I didn't know. I was looking at a young doctor who just knew this guy was very dead and that was it. It was over. So my partner and I escorted the grieving widow - she was maybe 21 or so - into another room and asked her how the accident had happened. She was very drunk. She said they were at a club up the road a bit and they left and she was following in the car when suddenly he just lost the motorcycle, went off the road and right smack into a tree.

Okay, so was he drunk? Suddenly she is all over me again, beating me. My partner lifted her off. "He's dead she said. What does it matter?" I didn't feel like explaining it to her.

Her next question? Seriously: "When will I get the insurance money on him?"

I looked over at my partner and I met his gaze and something snapped and suddenly I was laughing. No, not laughing. It was more of a nervous giggle, I guess. Maybe stress related or something, I don't know. But suddenly this woman was all over me.

I didn't even blame her. I just sat there and took it.