chapter 14

JOHN

POLLY and the kids went back to the Cape while I was still in the hospital. We both felt the kids had been through enough, missed enough school, and it was time for them to get back to a normal life. Though how normal things could be with a cop or two sitting in the yard all day and night and a police escort to school, I don’t know. I wanted to be updated about who was on duty at all times at the house, and the guys who were guarding me kept me informed about that.

Rick Smith was one of the guys on the force I was tight with. He was the one who went to the house to get Polly on the night I was shot, and he came to see me on a regular basis. After I’d been in the hospital about three weeks, I was able to sit up and play a little chess when he or Don Price dropped by. It was a way to kill some time without too much talking, and it felt good to use my mind again, just to reassure myself that even though I’d been shot in the head, I was still all there. I’d been having some short-term memory problems—people’s names, stuff like that, but no major brain damage, which was a big relief for me.

Chess had been a hobby of mine since I was in the Air Force. Learned it while in the brig serving time for “inciting a riot”—that was the charge, anyway. If you didn’t know better, it might sound like I went from a life of crime on the streets of Boston to a life of crime in the service. But there are two sides to every story. This time I was going to fight one guy I had a problem with, but when he showed up at the appointed place and time, he had five other guys with him. So my guys got into it, and next thing you know, it was an all-out brawl. When we were finally pulled apart, I was thrown into the brig for a month, along with him and all five of his guys. This was the so-called “riot” that I incited; guilty as charged.

During our confinement, this guy and I started playing a lot of basketball and eventually became friends. One of his friends, another inmate, was a pretty damn good chess player and taught me the game. I’d never played anything like it, and I took to it. It was a long month, and we played a lot of chess and basketball. I lost two stripes (Airman Second Class) because of the fight but learned chess and made a couple of good friends out of former enemies. Later, I earned the stripes back, and had I managed to be a good boy, probably would have made sergeant before my discharge.

Chess wasn’t Polly’s game, but I did find a couple of guys on the force who liked to play, so I usually carried a travel chess set in my cruiser. It was something to do to stay awake on slow nights, and I enjoyed the fact that I learned something new from every opponent—the more I played, the better I got.

When I was in the hospital, one of the guys brought me a chess set, remembering how much I liked to play. So when Rick dropped by one afternoon and found me awake and feeling pretty good, we started in on a game. As we were playing, he told me about the investigation into my shooting, what he had been hearing back at the department. It seemed that on the night I was shot, there was a group of cops in town on vacation from New York City. These guys got wind of what had happened and went into our local PD to report for duty. “They said they’d do whatever we needed, investigate, question people, even do street duty to reroute traffic from the scene,” Rick told me. “One of the guys even said he’d just hang around to get us coffee.”

At first, this story made me proud. Brothers in arms, indeed. I wanted to think I’d do the same if I was ever in a similar situation. I wrote a note on my board and showed it to Rick: “What happened?”

Rick looked down and shook his head. “I wasn’t there, but some of the guys told me that the chief turned them down, said we had it covered. Detective department was going to handle the investigation.” Rick gave me a knowing look.

I had also heard that the chief turned down an offer of assistance from the nearby Fall River Police Department and a couple of other offers. He didn’t want anybody going through his garbage. Those NYC cops probably would have solved this thing in one night. They would have questioned Meyer, arrested his ass, and still had time to go out for a beer. State police, too, though there was talk that Meyer had some pull there as well.

None of this was a surprise to me, but it still pissed me off. I was lying there watching liquid nutrition get pumped through a tube into my gut, half my face was blown off, and the brass of the Falmouth Police Department was still running scared of Meyer.

After Rick left, I told my nurse that I wanted to try walking again. I’d been getting up a couple of times a day and wheeling myself through the hallways. I’ve got to build up my stamina; it’s the only way I’m getting out of here, I thought. I walked into the hallway with her help and made it a few steps farther before I had to rest against the wall, using my IV pole to hold me up.

“You’re doing great!” the nurse said, smiling. “I honestly can’t believe that you’re even out of bed already.” I would have said something back to her, but I didn’t have my board to write on, and besides, I needed my strength for walking. It is amazing what you can do, I wanted to tell her, when you get angry enough.

Don Price had told me years before that Meyer’s game was psychological. He didn’t threaten; he never said anything that could come back to haunt him. Instead, he’d use taunts, hints. The most famous of these was “I smell smoke.” Ray would say this to let you know you were on his shit list. Smelling smoke meant that something, most likely your house or your car, was going to burn—maybe with you in it. And we knew from his past record that this wasn’t an idle threat. He would do it. And he would get away with it. Meyer had learned to be a wiser perp—probably something he picked up in prison. You can’t arrest someone for saying he smells smoke. But saying it was enough to get people to back off, and most of the time, Meyer didn’t actually have to do anything.

I had heard so many horror stories about Meyer that by the time I actually met the guy, I was in for a surprise. We had a shopping plaza in town anchored by a Stop & Shop grocery store. In 1972, when I’d been on the force a couple of years, the stores there started having problems with young punks gathering in large groups of vehicles in the parking lot. This usually happened in the evenings, on the weekends, but the kids were taking up most of the parking places and being obnoxious, loud, and general pains in the ass. The plaza manager wanted to hire an off-duty policeman to patrol the parking areas to the front and rear to prevent this accumulation of riffraff on Friday and Saturday nights. It was an outside detail but short hours, and once the word got out, it should have been a cakewalk. I volunteered for it and started rousting the personae non grata. I conducted a lot of vehicle inspections and issued expensive citations for any faults found. Anyone who got one, and the fine that went along with it, wouldn’t come back to this hangout spot anytime soon.

One evening, I told a teenage kid in his souped-up hot rod to go park someplace else. He did so by peeling out, burning rubber on the pavement of the parking lot. I took notice of his car and plates so I could discuss it with him if ever we were to meet again.

About an hour later, Meyer pulled into the lot in one of his huge garbage trucks. And right behind his truck was the hot rod. Obviously, this kid was someone Meyer knew. I approached the car and asked the kid for his license and registration.

“What for?” he huffed.

“For the purpose of issuing a citation,” I told him.

“What for? What did I do?” the kid asked.

“You’ll know when I give it to you,” I said. I could hear the rev of Meyer’s garbage truck as he pressed down on the gas, just idling beside us. He was like an angry bull, stamping his feet and snorting. I knew he was watching my back, but he probably couldn’t hear anything I was saying.

“That’s my uncle—maybe you want to talk to him before you write me a ticket,” the kid said snidely.

I kept my mouth shut and slowly wrote out the citation: “Failing to use care and caution in starting, stopping, and turning a vehicle.” As I handed it to him I said, “Anytime you want some more, just come back to this parking lot. I’ll be happy to oblige.”

Meyer was still there in his dump truck, the big compressor kind with the prongs on the front used to lift and empty Dumpsters into the crusher compartment. The thing smelled, not just of burning fuel but of garbage. It probably wasn’t full right now, but that was a stink you couldn’t get rid of. I found myself wondering if Meyer went home to his young girlfriend and his two kids smelling like that every night.

“Hey, cop!” he yelled at me. “What are you giving him a ticket for? He didn’t do anything!” I turned and walked around the truck to the driver’s side, then climbed up on the running board so we could talk face-to-face. This was the first time I had seen Meyer close up and personal, and I almost had to laugh. Here was this small, greasy-looking dude who had everyone in town scared to death. He looked like a real nobody: his ears stuck out from beneath his pomade-slicked black hair. He had a scrawny build, maybe five foot nothing, and the posture of a man twice his age. All of this combined with his sharp, pinched features reminded me of a troll.

“What’d you say?” I asked him.

Ray sniffed the air close to my face. “I said I smell smoke.” He grinned at me, deep lines cutting into his sharp face.

“You’re right,” I told him, pretending to sniff. “Kind of like the candles at somebody’s funeral, right?”

Two could play that game.

Ray looked startled—he wasn’t used to anyone standing up to him. Before he could say anything, I added, “So, Ray, if you’re planning to do some shopping here tonight, no problem. But if you’re not a customer, you’re gonna need to move out.” I climbed down from the truck and stood there looking at him. He stared back at me for a few minutes before slamming his truck into gear and roaring out of the lot at top speed, his nephew following behind him.

I’d been contrary since I was a teenager. Always wanted to tackle the biggest guy on the football team, bodycheck the biggest hockey player, etc. It didn’t matter if I came out second best in the collision; I wanted him to know I wasn’t running scared of contact, and I’d be back to whack him again as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I was building my own little power base as somebody you didn’t fuck with. If you messed with the bull, you’d get the horns. I had my turf and nobody—Monty, Ray, or even the privileged locals—nobody influenced my behavior. I was either too dumb to feel fear or too proud to show any.

My theory about Meyer back then was that he might come across as a menace to a teenage kid or his wife, but he was really just a blowhard, a bully who’d throw his weight around where he could. And I suspected that, just as fast, he’d pull his horns in when a bigger bull was present. I was quite proud of myself—I’d faced Meyer down. He’d lost turf and I’d gained some. Most important, though, I’d sent him a warning: his power base didn’t extend to me; he and his supporters were fair game where I was concerned.