The Many Indiscretions of Arty Boyle: A Novel

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The leaves that so vividly colored the New England fall just past, now lay scattered, shriveled and brown, across the Massachusetts landscape. On Federal Street in the City of Essex, the wind blew in from the harbor and sent dried leaves dancing over lawns, skipping along sidewalks, and tumbling in eddies at the bases of the buildings lining the street.

Federal Street ran along a high bluff that overlooked the harbor between Main Street, the city’s business thoroughfare, and Maple Street, home to the National Guard armory, police and fire department headquarters, and the city’s main public library. The origin of the street’s name was the source of some mystery. Except for a custom house, established by one of the first acts of Congress, and a single post office, there had been no other sustained federal presence in the city, and neither the post office nor the custom house (the latter closed long ago) had ever been located on Federal Street. The secretary of the city’s historical society, a spinster in her early sixties who devoted most of her life to historic minutiae, held that the street had been so named because the fledgling United States government, for a very brief time, maintained some sort of watch on the bluff to warn the custom house, located near the city dock, of the arrival of vessels. Others leaned toward the theory that it had been so named to commemorate Massachusetts’ ratification of the federal Constitution. In any event, the records that might have clarified the matter were no longer in existence. They had been destroyed in the city hall fire of 1799. There had been three city hall fires in all: the first in 1799, another in 1862, and the last in 1922. Each of these fires destroyed city records, which in turn contributed to the mystery surrounding the city’s early history. The fires may also have proved providential for the city administration in power at the time of each fire, as corruption within the halls of city government was not unknown in Essex.

Blessed with a well-protected but small harbor, Essex quickly gained importance in both shipbuilding and ocean commerce in the early years of the Republic. The first ship commissioned into the fledgling American Navy was built in an Essex shipyard, and because of its early prominence, Essex become the county seat of Salem County.

As time passed, however, Boston, with its larger harbor only ten miles to the south, soon eclipsed Essex, and the city’s shipbuilding and commercial prominence declined. The textile mills that replaced the seafaring industry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as the main source of employment had, by the early 1950s, moved south in search of cheaper labor, leaving Essex largely a bedroom community, with its residents primarily dependent on employment opportunities available in Boston and other nearby communities. Almost everybody who lived in Essex now worked somewhere else.

Since 1840, the lower part of Federal Street had been the site of the courts of Salem County. Closest to Main Street are the County Superior and the City of Essex District Courts, and directly across the street are the Probate Court and Registry of Deeds. On the corner, where Federal and Maple Streets intersect, stands the Essex Art Institute a world-class museum whose beginnings could be traced back to the period of the city’s maritime prosperity.

In the early years, the upper part of Federal Street had been home to the wealthy citizens of the city, but as Essex’s fortunes declined, so did those of Federal Street. Most of the houses that survived from those more prosperous times had been renovated into offices that now housed a number of the city’s lawyers and accountants. The largest and most notable of the surviving mansions had once been the ancestral home of the Deverns family, who provided the city with many of its early business and political leaders. It now housed the local chapter of the American Red Cross. A stately Victorian house tucked among those now occupied by the lawyers and accountants was the home of Lawrence Boyle, a prominent Boston criminal lawyer. Since his death, it had been home to his widow and his youngest son, Arthur Garret Boyle.

Those passing the Essex District Courthouse this late November morning paid little heed to the four people—two men, a woman, and a younger blond man—standing beside one of the large pillars that gave the building its Greek Revival appearance. There was nothing to distinguish them from the other people now gathering on the courthouse steps waiting for the doors to open.

The two men stood opposite one another engaged in conversation, while the woman stood behind them, listening to what was being said, but not participating. The young blond man, who appeared to be a year or two out of his teens, stood slightly apart from the other three.

The larger of the two men was a lawyer named Clayton Holmes. He was in his early forties, with salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back from his forehead and held in place with a noticeable coating of pomade. There was a slight stubble on his face, and he wore a chesterfield overcoat, the elbows and back of which were soiled and showed signs of wear. Closer examination of his dress revealed stains on his tie and a soiled white shirt. What could be seen of his dark gray suit revealed a garment that was badly in need of pressing. In his right hand he carried a well-worn briefcase that bulged with papers, the products of his profession.

Clayton Holmes once had a flourishing criminal practice in the courts of Eastern Massachusetts, but an acrimonious divorce, addictions to cocaine and alcohol, and a three-year suspension from the Bar for unauthorized use of clients’ money brought him to his present state. Holmes was a sole practitioner whose office was a single room on the ground floor of a house on Federal Street, a building he shared with another legal firm and the offices of two accountants. He had no secretary, and used the legal library in the Salem County Superior Courthouse to conduct what little legal research he did. When times were hard and he was unable to make the rent on his room at the Baxter boarding house, he slept on the floor of his office. He now eked out a living as best he could practicing in the district courts, where the turnover was quick and paperwork and stress were minimal. His practice provided Holmes with just enough money to live on and with which to support his on-again-off-again addictions to alcohol and cocaine. There was nothing now in either his appearance or his lawyering skills to distinguish him from the hundreds of other lawyers who toiled in the lower courts of the Commonwealth. He was, in fact, better known in the bars he frequented and the back alleys of Boston’s red-light district, where he found his women, than in the courts in which he practiced.

The other man, Arthur Garret Boyle—who preferred to be called Arty—was an absolute contrast to Clayton Holmes. He was well groomed, had an athletic build, stood about six feet tall, with a full head of bright red hair, and exhibited the demeanor of a man in charge. He was dressed casually in a gray tweed sports jacket, tan slacks, and a light blue checked shirt, open at the neck. The tan trench coat he wore was unbuttoned at the front as an accommodation to the unseasonably warm November morning. Boyle’s most noticeable features were his penetrating blue eyes, which at the moment were rigidly fixed on the attorney.

Work out a deal with the DA, Boyle said to the lawyer. I think you’re going to find him cooperative. Charlie Doyle here, Boyle motioned in the direction of the young blond man whose interest was now fixed on several young women waiting on the courthouse steps, is a good kid, and I know you can help him, and I’ll appreciate it.

The compliment and articulation of gratitude seemed to have little impact on Holmes; his facial expression remained unchanged.

Without waiting for acknowledgment from the lawyer, Boyle turned and spoke to the woman.

Mary Agnes, stay with Charlie and let me know how things go.

With that, Boyle turned and headed down the courthouse steps toward the street. With Boyle’s eyes no longer on him, the lawyer wordlessly and abruptly turned his back on Mary Agnes and Charlie and quickly entered the courthouse, the broad back of his soiled chesterfield overcoat blending with others now entering the building.

Mary Agnes turned to the young man. It’s time to go in, Charlie.

Mary Agnes’ hands, now stuffed in the side pockets of her parka, shook, as they often did when she was nervous. Her voice when she spoke was soft, barley above a whisper. Why had she agreed to help Arty? she wondered. Why had she accepted the responsibility?

Mary Agnes stood about five feet six or so and had red hair, which was cut short. There were freckles on her cheeks and across her nose, but aside from the freckles her skin was clear and pale, almost translucent. Her blue eyes were set wide apart, and there was a watery, dreamy look to them, a look that one saw in the eyes of people on a heavy dose of tranquilizers. She was dressed casually in white sneakers, blue jeans, and a white turtleneck sweater under a black parka. Casual dress with jeans was Mary Agnes’ style now; it had been a long time since she had been concerned about how she looked.

Mary Agnes Boyle-Grayland was Arty’s sister. She was thirty-seven, and since childhood had been a soul in turmoil. She married at nineteen, only a year out of high school. Six months after the wedding, her daughter Colleen was born, and three years later a son, Peter. Their father, Edmond Gardner, left Mary Agnes when Peter was two. After a civil divorce, Mary Agnes married for a second time in the same church she had exchanged vows less than five years earlier. Her first marriage had been annulled by the Catholic Church thanks to the influence and intervention of her older brother, Father Francis

Boyle, a Catholic priest who at the time was an assistant to the Archbishop of Boston. As a divorced person, Mary Agnes would have been denied Communion, marriage, and the other sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, but with an annulment, in the eyes of the Church, she had never been married and therefore had never been divorced and thus she was free to marry again within the Church. This, of course, made Colleen and Peter, the children from her first marriage, technically children born out of wedlock, but this did not seem to bother either the Church or Mary Agnes.

Her second husband, Peter Grayland, left on their second anniversary. He simply stopped talking to Mary Agnes and her children, and one day shortly after his silent treatment began drove off while Mary Agnes watched through a living room window. There had been no anger, no recriminations, and—what was hardest for Mary Agnes to accept, and what came back so often to fuel her despair—no explanation. Mary Agnes chose not to divorce Grayland and was legally still married to him, although she had long ago decided that she would never allow him back into her life.

The breakup of the second marriage, from which there were no children, marked the beginning of Mary Agnes’ dependence on Valium and psychotherapy and her involvement with a series of men who treated her badly and lowered even further her already low self-esteem. Mary Agnes really never had anyone to whom she was close or in whom she could confide. While she was able to confide to a limited extent in the series of therapists she consulted, even these relationships were often strained. Her relationship with her parents had also been troubled and distant: her mother had always been indifferent toward her, and her father sexually abused her. Mary Agnes had maintained only a limited relationship with her older brother Francis, primarily because Francis diligently avoided family involvements. So, by default, the closest of her family members—in the sense that either could be close to anyone—was her brother Arty.

Arty Boyle moved quickly after leaving the courthouse, his mind active. His customized 1970 Corvette was parked next to a hydrant two blocks away, and he wanted to avoid a ticket. The city strictly enforced parking around the courthouses when the courts were in session, and the meter maids would soon begin their rounds. He didn’t mind paying a fine for the convenience of parking close to where he had business, but because of his secretive nature he sought to avoid having his name tied to any particular place. A ticket would record his license plate and the fact that a car registered to him was in Essex on a particular date, at a particular time, and parked in a particular location, with the resulting inference, should anyone be interested, that Arty had been there at that time and in that place.

Arthur Boyle was thirty-six, a high school dropout with a tested IQof 175. He was the youngest in the Boyle family and normally kept Mary Agnes and the other members of his family out of his affairs, preferring to look after things himself. When an important business matter came up unexpectedly, however, Arty had been unable to cover Charlie Doyle’s court hearing. He had a job for Charlie, and it was important that Charlie not have a criminal record. Charlie’s problem—car theft—would leave him with a criminal record if matters were allowed to run their course. Arty called in a debt, and the debtor, a fellow who never took no for an answer, spoke with the owner of the automobile Charlie had allegedly stolen. The owner now understood that he was to ask the DA to drop the charges because he suddenly remembered that he had given Charlie permission to use his car. It was pure Arty Boyle, Arty mused: behind the scenes, arranging things, making things work to his advantage. Arty reflected on his ability to use people. Clayton Holmes would send him a bill, and Arty would pay it, even though Holmes was in Arty’s pocket.

Arty had two things on the lawyer: his cocaine habit, which Holmes sometimes supported by dealing, and the fact that Holmes killed someone. The killing, while technically an accident, involved a hit-and-run in which Holmes, in a drunken and drugged state, killed a seven-year-old girl with his car. Holmes left the scene while the child lay bleeding to death in the street. The local police periodically reopened their investigation in response to the urging of the girl’s parents, but there was little evidence to go on. Arty learned of the lawyer’s involvement when Holmes asked one of Arty’s business associates, the operator of a body shop in nearby Rye, New Hampshire, to repair the car. Arty’s knowledge of Holmes’ drug dependency and the hit-and-run, along with the power such knowledge conferred, were enough to keep the lawyer in line and available whenever Arty needed him. Holmes, when pressed, and with the right inducement, was still capable of manipulating the law to his client’s advantage, even though his practice now seldom called on him to do more than plead his clients out.

The lawyer was vulnerable and weak, an ideal combination in a person Arty found useful. In spite of his opinion of the attorney, Arty always treated him with respect, as he did all of the people with whom he had dealings. He learned long ago that people who abused and mistreated others generally ended up the worse for it. Damaged pride was an emotion that was apt to exert itself at the wrong time and in unpredictable ways. But manipulating people was a skill Arty had finely honed. As far back as Arty could remember, he had been a manipulator. When he wanted something, he instinctively knew how to get it. Crying and tantrums were his first methods; later he used psychological manipulation. He learned early to find the things in people that he could use to gain his ends. He also learned to plan ahead, laying out his moves, like a general planning a military campaign, using others to do what he wanted. He was not above using violence himself, but preferred to use others when force was required. Arty was a master user.

If the saying is true that you are a product of your upbringing, then Arty Boyle epitomized the saying. His mother, Margaret, suffered so long from her husband’s savage treatment and emotional neglect that she had drawn into herself, and played little role in the lives of her children. As a young woman, she had been attractive and popular. She was also, before her marriage, kind and generous, but after her marriage she seldom exhibited these traits, suppressed as they were by her husband’s abuse and her own sense of inadequacy. Margaret Katherine Flynn-Boyle was raised in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. Her father was a Boston police officer, and she was brought up in a strict Catholic home. As she grew from a child into a woman, the religion that she once looked on as a burden took on new meaning for her, and she became a devout Catholic.

Because of her faith, she weathered the abuse from her husband, Lawrence Arthur Boyle, and never considered the possibility of divorce. When she sought guidance from the Church, she was told by the priests who counseled her to try harder to please her husband and to pray to the Virgin Mary for her intercession. In time, she came to believe that Lawrence Boyle’s abuse was evidence of her own failings and lack of faith. If she prayed more, she thought, she would become a better homemaker, a better wife, a better parent, a better lover as God intended her to be, and he would change. But despite her prayers, the abuse continued. As time passed, Margaret simply withdrew into herself and bore it.

Arty’s father had been a prominent criminal attorney with an office on Tremont Street in Boston and a lucrative practice in the Boston Municipal and Suffolk Superior Courts. His clients included a number of Boston’s criminal elite. He was also a wife beater and a closet drunk who sexually abused his only daughter. It was Arty who learned of this abuse and told Mary Agnes to report it to the parish priests if he didn’t stop. She apparently followed Arty’s advice since the abuse suddenly stopped. Mary Agnes and Arty never discussed the subject of their father’s sexual abuse again. For that matter, the two discussed very little that was personal in nature, a condition that was common to all members of the Boyle family.

Arty’s father died suddenly of a heart attack during Arty’s senior year in high school. His father’s death occurred during Christmas vacation, and Arty was sure that his father planned it that way. This was not the first time his father caused a problem at Christmastime. Arty remembered a number of incidents throughout the years, particularly one that occurred just before Christmas the year he turned nine. His father returned home from work drunk, and because his mother set up the Christmas tree in a different place in the living room, he had flown into a rage. He grabbed the tree and hurled it across the room, and then proceeded to stomp on the presents. Then, in front of the children, he slapped his mother repeatedly, stopping only when Arty and his older brother Francis intervened. It was the first and only time Arty could remember that Francis had crossed his father. Francis’ usual style had been to grab his coat and leave the house rather than to involve himself when trouble started. His father’s death merely served to distract the family from the holiday, what with funeral arrangements and the stress of keeping up appearances as a grieving family. In fact, however, Lawrence Boyle had given his family the best Christmas present they ever had. A week to the day after his father’s burial, Arty returned to the cemetery after dark and urinated on his father’s grave. Except for Arty’s visit, no other member of Lawrence Boyle’s immediate family ever visited the grave after the funeral.

A forensic psychiatrist examining the Boyle family dynamic and Arty’s part in it might have concluded that this was the point at which Arty’s sociopathic personality began to develop. Arty Boyle outwardly demonstrated all the qualities that appealed to people. His charisma, however, was not native to him, nor was it based on a feeling of empathy toward others. He had studied the characters in movies and books that appeared to him to be most appealing to others and patterned his personality after them. Although he outwardly demonstrated all the character traits that should have made for an exemplary person, there was a dark side to Arty, and it was this dark side that was the true Arty Boyle: a man who lacked all compassion or empathy toward others; a person who was self absorbed and out only for himself. He was also a fatalist who deep down did not believe in God or a life after death, although he readily admitted there was a design to nature and an orderly structure to the universe. These he attributed to circumstance and the fact that once set in motion, things predictably followed the path established by the laws of physics and chemistry and their interactions. What he had not figured out was what started it all, but this he was willing to ascribe to a natural cause, not a supernatural one.

A self taught speed-reader, Arty devoured books at an astonishing rate, borrowing most from the Essex and Boston public libraries. The librarians there knew him well and expressed true amazement at his broad range of interests. At first they thought he was the sort who enjoyed putting librarians to the effort of locating obscure, out-of-print books that were never read. But Arty did in fact read them, and moreover, he retained what he read.

His main interests concerned all things connected with art and popular music. His art research had been extensive. Among the various topics into which he delved were the law of property as it pertained to art, basic science, art restoration techniques, techniques used to protect art from theft, and the general subject of museum security, although he found an appalling paucity of information on the latter. He took on the art and artists of the Renaissance period, and after that the lives and works of the major American and European artists of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. He spent little time on modern art, although he read enough to have an appreciation and understanding of the work of the major modern twentieth century artists. His knowledge of American and European decorative arts was encyclopedic. His memory was extraordinary, and he was able to recall dates, names, places, and other details with amazing accuracy. Along the way he also discovered the seamy side of the Art World—the thieves and forgers who populated his-tory—and he developed a fascination with them. Early on he decided that his life would center on the business of art.

Arty’s first venture into buying and selling a work of art occurred when he had taken a Roman figurine from a high school classmate in payment for a drug debt. The figurine was the property of the classmate’s father; the classmate had stolen it when Arty threatened violence if the debt was not paid. Arty sold the figurine to an antique dealer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and realized twice the amount of the debt his classmate owed him. Research into Roman and Greek art followed, from which he learned that the price he had been paid by the antique dealer amounted to a theft. As a consequence, that antique shop became the target of one of the first thefts Arty ever planned and executed. The antique dealer still had the Roman figurine; after regaining possession of it, Arty resold it to a Washington D.C. art dealer at the market price. In the end, he realized a 200% profit on that particular object.

During his high school years, Arty began to develop his lifestyle. He ran a sports pool and would cover bets on anything. He also serviced the drug needs of his classmates, buying the drugs he needed on the streets of Boston. He had several suppliers, but kept to himself the fact that he was buying for others. Even then he understood the necessity of maintaining his independence and distance from the criminal element he used in his various enterprises. After dropping out of school after his father’s death, Arty worked for Rudolph Cate. Cate was a resident of Boston’s North End and a small-time criminal his father had represented off and on throughout the years. Cate came to his father’s wake and pulled Arty aside to tell him how much he admired Arty’s father. At the time, Cate told Arty that if he ever needed anything, he should look him up. Arty had taken Cate at his word and asked for a job. Cate took Arty under his wing and taught him, as a master would an apprentice, the how and the why of all things criminal.

Cate’s main business was numbers and loan sharking. He operated in an area of Boston dominated by the Italian Mafia (with their permission, of course), and paid a hefty commission to the Italian bosses for the privilege. He tried to operate his business, as he was prone to call what he did, in an ethical manner. He never welshed on a bet, and seldom resorted to violence to collect on a loan, preferring to be patient if he believed the debtor’s story and that story called for compassion. But lie to him or try to stall on a payment without good reason, and the miscreant would feel the knee-breaking force of a Mafia enforcer—a service that came with the commission he paid to the Italian bosses. Cate was also an anomaly in North End criminal society since he was not of pure Italian decent. He was small in stature and slight of build, with an aquiline nose from his mother’s Italian side, and thinning blond hair passed on to him by his father’s Welsh ancestors. In addition to his appearance, he also failed to fit the mold when it came to the way he conducted his personal affairs. Cate was a good family man, with two sons he was proud of, a daughter he idealized, and a wife he adored and to whom he was totally faithful. The thing that made him truly different among his criminal brethren, however, was the fact that, on occasion, he provided information of value to friends on the Boston police force. By walking this fine line between the criminal bosses and the authorities, Cate kept his business activities tolerated by both sides of the law.

During the time Arty worked for Cate, he learned the importance of diplomacy and quid pro quo, as well as the value of the appearance of integrity in one who hoped to prosper. He also made a number of contacts that would later prove useful. Not surprisingly, these contacts were on both the criminal and legal sides of the fence, since many of the local police officers placed bets with Cate; occasionally, when a cop found the sources for a legitimate loan temporarily closed to him, he might borrowed money from the Welsh-Italian. As Cate’s man, Arty was often the one who handled their action or arranged the details of their loans. During his time with Cate, Arty developed contacts within the leadership of the local Italian Mafia. They considered Arty someone to keep an eye on—someone with brains and potential.

Arty believed that the business he had chosen—a mixture of dealing in stolen and forged art with legitimate buying and selling of art—made for a proper mix, given the nature of the market in which he did business. There was an underbelly to the commerce of art. Present were elements from the darker side of human nature, greed and the drive to possess being the most pronounced. There was also the desire for prestige and ego-fulfillment in the mix as well. Compromised ethics was an ingredient, and plain dishonesty a frequent player. Art was bought and sold at high prices, and those that traded in it or were associated with it comprised a segment of society that Arty called The Art World. This world was populated by art historians, museum directors and curators, members of museum governing bodies, art critics and commentators, collectors, art auction house staffs, dealers, so-called art patrons, and those others in society that formed the social milieu that surrounded the World. Significantly, he did not include artists in this group, even though it was the efforts of the artists and artisans of the present and past that made the Art World possible. Arty found those who inhabited the world in which he did business to be an interesting mixture. They were generally wealthy, well educated, sophisticated, and skilled in the social graces. These people were raised with every advantage and social connection. Both old money and new money coveted what was fashionable and prestigious in art. In this World, good art, money, and social position were synonymous.

At heart, Arty was a cynic, and his cynicism helped him rationalize his place in the business world. He had no compunction about exploiting people who profited from the work of others. The work of the impressionist mas-ters—for instance, Claude Monet or Pierre-August Renoir—now sold for millions, while the painters themselves, in comparison, received little for their efforts during their lifetimes. The elite of the Art World dictated whose work was worth investing in, and its members sustained an upscale lifestyle by trading in the work and genius of others. Among this group, the provenance of a valuable work of art was often not vigorously scrutinized, if on the surface, there were no noticeable gaps or blemishes. Like many people, Arty knew that works of art that once belonged to the private collections of Jews and others plundered by the Nazis found their way into the market and now hung on the walls of museums and were included in the collections of some of the more wealthy collectors. In many cases, the current owners skillfully avoided asking questions about provenance, preferring to accept the stories of those from whom they acquired the art and hopeful that the claims of the true owners had been silenced by a concentration camp or rendered mute by the upheaval and destruction of the war. Even the Louvre, generally considered to be the world’s preeminent art museum, owed its beginnings and many of the most important works in its collection to the plunderings of Napoleon.

Arty thought that many people who were major contributors to the country’s leading museums did so for ulterior motives. He believed one reason a donor gave to a museum was to secure the advice of the museum staff in purchasing art for his or her private collection. Museum staff members played a large role in determining the importance and thus the value of an artist’s work, and by seeking this advice, the contributor was assuring an increase in his or her investment. Another reason, Arty believed, was to advance their social status in the eyes of the community. Admittedly, there might be other, perhaps more laudable reasons, but these were the ones Arty considered to be the most relevant. Arty was, after all, a cynic.

One of the things that gave Arty a perverse sense of satisfaction was the knowledge that many of the people who populated the Art World regarded him as a friend and a trusted source of the art they collected.

Among the many lessons Arty learned from Cate was one he found particularly valuable: always have an inside man. There was no substitute for knowing what insiders knew. As his business had developed, Arty hired a research firm to help him developed his insider contacts. The firm provided him with lists of key people to cultivate and developed personal information on these people that allowed Arty to ingratiate himself. He sent birthday gifts, congratulations on promotions and other notable achievements, and contributed financially to causes they supported. Arty’s skill in making contacts among the influential members of the international art elite resulted in a network of information and contacts that would have been the envy of the CIA and KGB alike.

Arty’s other passion—other than art, that is—was music. His interest in music began when he received a guitar for Christmas when he was thirteen. His mother bought it for him, and by then he was into the contemporary music scene, attending concerts and buying records. His favorites were the Drifters and Elvis Presley. He considered their music meaningful. He took a few guitar lessons from a neighbor, a professional musician, and discovered he had a talent for the instrument. He worked hard on his own and with a series of music teachers to develop his skill. In high school, he formed a band that played at school dances and an occasional local charity event. In those days he played for free. He had grown musically through the years and now had a band of professional musicians that played on Cape Cod during the summers. The musicians who played with him often changed from year to year, and would be under contract to him from the Fourth of July through Labor Day. Arty employed a booking agent who arranged the band’s performances. They played from Falmouth to Provincetown, usually in night clubs frequented by the young. He found the Cape life in summer relaxed and cosmopolitan, where people of all professions and social status mixed freely. Arty for years rented a summer place in Mashpee, and it became the focal point of his life in summer. As a musician, he had a ready entrée into the Cape’s summer society and many opportunities to meet people useful in his art business. His band and art business were intertwined, one furthering the other. It never crossed Arty’s mind that he should approach life and business in any other way.

Through the years, Arty’s art business made him wealthy. He was well known in the art circles of Boston, New York, Washington D.C, London, Paris, and Rome. In his business transactions, he subscribed to the policy that the ends justify the means when the outcome he desired was more readily attainable through theft, deception, fraud, or violence, but was clever and selective in his use of these methods.

2     

The Wagon Wheel nightclub was busy. It was a Friday night, the week before Christmas, and as usual the crowd inside far exceeded the occupancy limits set by the fire department. The club’s band played weekends and holidays, offering a wide variety of music ranging from ballads to rock ‘n’ roll. Tonight, the majority of the tunes would be rock ‘n’ roll; since the Saturday crowd tended to be young, the music would be loud.

The Wagon Wheel had stood next to the Rialto Movie Theater on Washington Street in Roslindale Square, an old Boston neighborhood, since 1939. While the ownership changed over the years, each succeeding owner kept the club’s original name. The club’s clientele had always consisted mainly of Roslindale’s blue-collar working class and the neighborhood’s young people, most of whom were under the legal drinking age. Checking ID was not an activity engaged in by the Wagon Wheel’s employees except when the police or a Liquor Control Board agent paid one of their rare visits. Through the years, the club had also been popular with the neighborhood’s returning military veterans. Of the veterans, now only those from Vietnam stopped by. The veterans from America’s other wars had long ago found other venues for their drinking and socializing—venues more in keeping with their advancing age.

The Club consisted of a horseshoe-shaped bar in the middle of a large, open room, with a number of round tables capable of seating four encircling the bar. The room was dimly lit, with several rotating globes that hung from the ceiling casting multi-colored flashing light over the entire area, creating a sense of glitz while imparting an odd combination of intimacy and anonymity to the room’s occupants.

At the far end of the room, there was a dance floor and a raised platform for the band. Beyond the stage were the doors to the restrooms and the kitchen. An odor of stale beer, sweat, and the smell of perfume hung in the air, the latter emanating from the female dancers, who with their male partners, moved energetically to the beat of the band.

The Wagon Wheel was also a hangout for the Mohawks, a local street gang that had been formed in the late thirties as an athletic association and which, in the beginning, fielded baseball and football teams that played in the Boston Recreation League. Now, the Mohawks were mainly into drugs, and frequently used the Wagon Wheel as a location in which to conduct their drug business.

Angelo DeCaro and Paul Murphy were not veterans. Their criminal records would have prevented them from serving in the armed forces even if they had been so inclined; nor were they Mohawks, nor from the neighborhood. They were at the Wagon Wheel this night because Murphy did business with the Mohawks, and he had some business to transact. The two were also with dates, two women they picked up the weekend before in a bar in Kenmore Square. The men’s intentions were to take care of Murphy’s business as quickly as possible, get their dates high on alcohol and cocaine, and have sex.

When they arrived at the Wagon Wheel, all the tables were filled. DeCaro and Murphy left their dates near the entrance with instructions to grab the first open table and had gone to the bar to order drinks. While waiting for their drinks, DeCaro saw two men talking with their dates. When the women started to go with the two strange men, DeCaro left the bar and walked over to intercept them.

Where you going, girls? he said when he was close enough to be heard over the din of the band and the crowd. You’re with us—me and Murphy.

One of the men who had been talking with the women, the shorter of the two, moved close to DeCaro and said, I went to high school with Diane, pointing to DeCaro’s date. We just want to talk.—It’s cool.

I said she’s with me. They both are, said DeCaro. So fuck off.

DeCaro was confident in speaking to the men as he did, since from their manner and dress he judged that the two were either college students or office workers, but were definitely not Mohawks, whose good will he wanted to maintain for Murphy’s sake. At this point, the taller of the two men, pushed by the crowd gathered around the door, shifted closer to where DeCaro was standing, and as he did so, someone in the crowd pushed against him, causing the man to bump into DeCaro. DeCaro, taking offense, took a swing at the man. Immediately, a fight erupted, and DeCaro was knocked to the floor. Murphy, seeing DeCaro in apparent trouble, left the bar and came over to help his friend. By the time Murphy was close enough to be of help, the bouncer had interceded and brought calm to the situation. The altercation lasted less than ten seconds, and the bouncer, not having seen everything that happened, allowed DeCaro and the other man to remain in the club. With things once again back to normal, the women joined DeCaro and Murphy, and they all returned to the bar. After they each consumed two drinks at the bar, a table became available and the group moved over to it.

Murphy left the group to conduct his business a short while later. When he returned, he and DeCaro made a move to leave. The women asked to stay a while longer, and after some pleading, the men agreed to stay. They ordered yet another round of drinks. Later in the evening the two men who had spoken to DeCaro and Murphy’s dates asked the women to dance: at Murphy’s urging the women reluctantly refused. Neither Murphy nor DeCaro had asked the women to dance, and instead spent the evening sitting at the table talking to each other and consuming one beer after another. The women, for their part, were bored. Both women enjoyed dancing, so they wanted to take the men up on their offer, but decided to decline rather than cause trouble. Shut out from the opportunity to dance, and their date’s conversation, and regretting they had asked to stay, the women settled into talking between themselves. The men’s effrontery, however, grated on Murphy. As the evening wore on, DeCaro and Murphy became drunk. There had been no further contact with the other men, but Murphy kept talking about their audacity. Each time he brought up the subject, his anger grew. When their dates went to the restroom, Murphy hatched a plan with DeCaro to settle the imagined score with the men. DeCaro had been the one with the greater reason to be upset, since he was the one involved in the brief altercation, but it was Murphy who was the one that blew the men’s overtures toward the women all out of proportion.

Just imagine the balls on those two fucks—trying to muscle in on what’s ours, Murphy repeated in various words, but the same theme, over and over.

DeCaro and Murphy had been friends for several years, and DeCaro was aware of Murphy’s quick temper and violent disposition. While he did not share Murphy’s concern about the men, he listened to Murphy’s plan, all the while believing that as the night progressed, Murphy’s anger would wane. DeCaro prided himself on having an easy disposition. Little bothered him, and when something did, his anger quickly cooled, but he had a long history of becoming involved in things he later regretted. He was a follower, and this had led him into associations with certain people that resulted in trouble. He had participated in a string of jobs with Murphy, several of which involved the use of violence. But he liked the excitement and the money this activity brought him, and was willing to hear what Murphy had to say. DeCaro was a man easily led onto the path of trouble.

At about eleven o’clock, DeCaro and Murphy and their dates left the Wagon Wheel and went to Murphy’s car, which was parked in a lot across the street.

DeCaro got into the front seat with Murphy; the two women were in the back seat. To keep the women quiet and occupied while they waited, Murphy had given them some coke, and he and DeCaro took some as well. After about fifteen minutes, the two men who had made overtures toward the women left the club and walked toward the parking lot. When the men started to get into their car, DeCaro and Murphy left theirs. They approached the men, who were surprised to see them. The plan Murphy hatched in the Wagon Wheel was to rough the men up and take whatever money they had. DeCaro took a swing at the one with whom he had the altercation, and the man deflected the blow and hit DeCaro on the shoulder with his fist. The man then kneed DeCaro in the groin, and delivered an uppercut to DeCaro’s chin. Murphy jumped the other man, but the man threw Murphy to the ground and kicked him. The men wrestled for a few moments, and it became obvious to Murphy and DeCaro that their opponents were not going to give in and in fact were beginning to gain the upper hand. What followed in the dimly lit parking lot lasted less than a minute. Quickly determining that the men were more than a match for them, DeCaro and Murphy, their judgment affected by the alcohol and cocaine, reverted to instinct. The first stroke of Murphy’s switchblade caught the smaller of the two men under the rib cage, piercing his spleen and large intestine. The sound the knife made as it entered the man’s body was like the sound a knife makes when it cuts into a watermelon. The second stroke severed an artery in his neck. DeCaro, still reeling from the blinding pain in his groin, pulled the twenty-two revolver he was carrying and pointed it at his man. His purpose was to stop the man’s attack—nothing more. The man lunged toward DeCaro; DeCaro’s finger jerked in reaction to the man’s movement, tightening on the trigger. The twenty-two-caliber bullet struck the man in the head, just above his right temple. The pistol shot resounding in the cool night air sounded like someone loudly clapping his hands. The man immediately slumped to the ground, his breath escaping from his lungs as he fell. DeCaro, not realizing he had already shot the man, pointed the gun at the man in an attempt to convince him to stay where he was, but his trigger finger reflexively retracted and the gun’s hammer came down on the next cartridge in the cylinder. The gun, however, made no sound; it had misfired. The man on the ground remained motionless.

With both men down, Murphy and DeCaro hurried back to their car. Within a few seconds they were racing from the parking lot, lights out, Murphy at the wheel, and turning into traffic on Washington Street. The two men from the club bled onto the blacktop behind them.

Murphy and DeCaro’s haste in returning to the car, combined with the high rate of speed at which they exited the parking lot, scared the women. They began to ask rapid questions. What happened? What did you guys do?

Murphy turned to the women and told them that nothing had happened, that he drove this way all the time. Realizing that something was wrong but that the best course of action was to ask no further questions, the women grew quiet. The cocaine they inhaled while waiting in the parking lot had also taken hold, and it distracted them somewhat from their concerns, so that they seemed to calm down about the parking lot.

By now the car had gone about two blocks on Washington Street with the lights out, and DeCaro motioned to Murphy to turn them on, muttering through clenched teeth, Turn the fucking lights on before you kill us. In a few minutes, the car blended with the rest of the traffic on Washington Street, and after a number of abrupt turns onto a series of side streets, Murphy parked the car under a street light in front of a darkened auto repair shop.

The women, motionless in the back seat, watched and waited to see what would happen next. Ignorant of what had actually occurred, they did not realize the position they were in.

Both women had grown up in Dorchester, a block from one another, and been friends since grade school. Both were from Irish Catholic backgrounds. The taller of the two, Mary O’Connell, was the better looking. She was twenty-two, unmarried, lived alone, and was fashionably thin, with large, firm breasts and good legs. For the past two years, Mary worked for an escort service. She recently quit escort work after one of her clients roughed her up pretty badly before her driver, who was monitoring the date through a concealed listening device she carried in her purse, was able to come to her