BEFORE HE BECAME A POLICE OFFICER, Chris Brighton served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam. Even in December it was eighty degrees and humid enough to swim through the air, a meteorological combination that guys from New England could never quite get used to. A nineteen-year-old corporal with the First Marine Division, Brighton was just three weeks shy of his thirteen-month tour of duty in Quang Nam Province, a few miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, when he was assigned to regimental headquarters. After months in the bush, Brighton acted as squad leader for a mechanized unit that patrolled a section of dirt road connecting HQ to the battalion area.
Regiment was no safer than the jungle; in fact, a lot of people were killed or wounded on the dusk-to-dawn “rat patrol.” But there were hot meals and cold beer and pickup basketball games at HQ, and Corporal Brighton was able to write his family to say that he'd be home in less than a month.
The middle of seven children, Christopher Robert Brighton was the son of a salesman and a secretary, and a 1968 graduate of Scituate High, where he played football and golf and ran track. An affable kid with dark hair and a loose grin, Brighton entertained the other jarheads with his deadpan wit, often ending conversations with “Cheer up. Things could get a lot worse.” Mostly, he looked forward to going back to the South Shore and getting a job as a bartender, where he'd turn his charm on the ladies.
On the night of December 7, 1969, Chris Brighton rode in the first of three jeeps, sitting beside the driver trussed up in a flak jacket with his M-16 and a two-way radio. Four Marines occupied the second vehicle, which had a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on it. The third jeep contained three Marines and a 60 Mike-Mike, a portable cannon the size of a golf bag. The unit provided mine detection and security from the bridge near Hill 55, one and a quarter miles north to checkpoint Alpha, two miles west to battalion HQ, and two miles south to Route 1, the main artery for U.S. military traffic in that part of Vietnam.
The convoy left battalion shortly after 2:00 A.M., running without lights and keeping a ten-yard interval between the jeeps. Three quarters of a mile from checkpoint Bravo, they reached a tiny, nameless hamlet that occupied both sides of the road. The driver of the first jeep detected movement in the ville, and Corporal Brighton signaled the convoy to a halt. Using a tiny penlight, one of the Marines in the second vehicle identified a small figure dressed in ragged pajamas crouching by the shoulder of the road.
“I got something,” said the Marine.
Twisting a knob on the penlight, the Marine widened the beam of light, illuminating the face of a ten-year-old boy who squatted in the weeds.
“It's all right,” called a Marine in the third jeep. “I know the kid.”
The Marine spoke to the child in Vietnamese, and he rose out of the tall grass and approached the convoy. When the boy reached the gap between the second and third jeeps, the abrupt noise of an explosion rent the air and Chris Brighton was thrown from the jeep onto the ground.
Dazed for a moment, Brighton reached up and grabbed the radio handset, calling in their position and asking for immediate air support. He felt something oozing from his head and realized that the back of his helmet was gone. Men were screaming, and the smell of cordite from the spent ordnance and the whoop-whoop of helicopter rotors filled the night sky.
Brighton looked at his hand; it was covered with blood. Then he passed out.
Marine investigators would learn that the ten-year-old had two claymore mines strapped to his torso, and when he reached the optimum killing zone, a member of the Vietcong hidden in the jungle detonated the mines, throwing hundreds of steel ball bearings in every direction. Two Marines were killed instantly; a third would die of his wounds at the battalion aid station, and all the rest were injured, some quite badly.
Chris Brighton's flak jacket absorbed most of the blast, saving his life. The child was obliterated.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Brighton was patched up in the battalion area, then stabilized and sent on to Japan and later to Walter Reed Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finally, the Chelsea Naval Hospital in Massachusetts. His convalescence lasted over a year. Brighton lost the upper portion of his left lung. His skull was fractured and a small plastic plate was inserted to cover the hole left by the missing bone fragments.
CHRIS BRIGHTON IS TELLING ME this story at the bar in the Fours Grille, a short walk from North Station in downtown Boston. “I still got shrapnel in there,” he says, rotating his arm like a pitcher warming up.
The Fours is decorated in mahogany wainscoting, with frosted half windows separating the lounge from the dining area. Autographed jerseys from Boston sportsmen adorn the walls: Larry Bird's number 33 in Celtics green; quarterback Tom Brady of the New England Patriots; and, of course, hockey legend Bobby Orr's number 4, adorning the home whites of the Big Bad Bruins. On the menu is a veal cutlet sandwich named for Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro, a handsome kid who was born in Revere, got hit in the head with a pitched ball, and ended up dying young. While most people are struggling to get their tax returns done, the patrons at the bar are more concerned about the Sox-Orioles game on TV.
When the bartender, a squat, florid-faced gent with wavy hair, comes over, Brighton winks at him and says; “You look familiar. Ever been locked up?”
I'd been told that “Kegs” Brighton likes to tip 'em and has been dogging his favorite hangouts for a while now: the Burren in Somerville, Tavern on the Green, the Fours. Chris is a close friend of the McCains and played a significant role in the defining moments of big Joe's life. But instead of the bitter, introverted, perhaps even hostile man that I had imagined, state trooper Chris Brighton is friendly and charming. He apologizes for his busy schedule and keeps trying to buy me another drink.
Brighton looks more like a professional golfer than a cop. He's a shade over six feet but looks taller, and is dressed in a blue madras shirt, beige slacks, and tasseled loafers. Brighton has high-crowned dark hair, his face is tanned very dark from cruising on his boat, and his eyes are brown and lively, crinkling at the edges when he smiles, which is often.
But there's something about him that suggests a Johnny Mercer lyric: detached, world-weary, with a profound sadness lurking beneath the grin.
Brighton became a cop in 1978, choosing the Mets over the State Police because they allowed him to keep his monthly $681 disability pension from the Marine Corps. Several of Joe McCain's feats were mentioned at the Police Academy, and when the two met by chance a year later, recalls Brighton, “Just the way he said his own name set the tone for his personality. Joe was tough, he was honest, and he had a great knowledge of organized crime.”
Shaking his head, Brighton says, “He could meet somebody once, just once, say, walking down State Street, and five or six years later he could tell you exactly where he met the guy and what he was doing at the time.”
When our conversation turns to the night that big Joe got shot, Brighton borrows a pen from the bartender, squares up his place mat, and sketches a diagram of Melvin Lee's kitchen in Hyde Park. The drawing is meticulous and precise; it looks like a geometry equation.
“I was sitting at the table,” says Brighton, making a little x on the place mat. He stares at it for a moment. “Right here.”
The room was occupied by Brighton and the three drug suspects and filled with boisterous talk. Melvin Lee wanted Brighton to get him a bartending job up in North Conway, New Hampshire, and Brighton was kidding him about never having skied before. Then, in the space of a minute, Melvin Lee and Tommy Lofgren disappeared upstairs and Vladimir Lafontant retreated into the bathroom off the kitchen.
Where'd everybody go? Brighton asked himself.
It didn't take long to find out. Brighton heard a click from somewhere behind him and Lafontant rushed back into the room. The drug dealer circled the table, menacing Brighton with a sawed-off shotgun.
“Take off your fucking clothes,” said Lafontant.
When the barrel of the shotgun reached eye level and Brighton could see right into it, he thought, This is it. I'm dead.
In one movement, Brighton says, he shoved the gun barrel aside and leaped up from the chair while reaching for the .38 tucked into his waistband. But Lafontant kicked him in the balls and snatched his gun away and ran out of the room, down the narrow hallway toward the front door.
I've been in that house and that hallway, and can picture everything Chris Brighton is saying: the cramped, filthy rooms, the dirty dishes and musky odor; even the sense of desperation oozing from the walls. Poorly lit and badly ventilated, 276 Wood Avenue is the sort of place where evil things are likely to occur— and they did.
Several gunshots echoed through the house. Brighton crawled over the grimy linoleum, staggered to his feet and jumped out the back door. There was a four-foot drop-off from the porch and he tumbled onto the ground.
His gun drawn, Mark Cronin ran through the yard and up the back stairs. On his way by, Cronin asked Brighton if he was all right.
“I'm okay,” he said.
When Brighton ran around the house, Joe McCain was lying on the sidewalk bleeding, with Al DiSalvo and Biff McLean kneeling over him. Backup was arriving from every direction and there were a lot of revolving lights and sirens.
“Did we get him?” McCain asked Brighton.
Brighton looked over toward Lafontant, who was lying dead in the street. “Yeah, Joe,” he said. “We got him.”
Then the paramedics pushed Brighton away and he walked over to the porch and buried his face in his hands.
Later, after the investigation was finished, one of the Boston cops who was on the scene gave Chris a memento: the sawed-off Continental shotgun that Lafontant was carrying. He keeps it at home, in the lockbox next to his service revolver.
AROUND THE CORNER FROM WHERE Chris Brighton and I are sitting is a giant concrete structure known as the Fleet Center, where the Celtics and Bruins play their home games. A few years ago, it replaced a much more beloved and significant architectural landmark, the Boston Garden, a dilapidated brick building that contained a dank ice rink and the famous parquet floor.
Atop the Garden was a huge billboard depicting a fifty-foot animated camel smoking a cigarette. To simulate a burning ember, the tip of the cigarette featured a red lightbulb. You could see it from miles away.
In that era, Joe McCain and Chris Brighton and Leo Papile and Sergeant Tommy White liked to drink at the 99 restaurant over on Friend Street. When they left the bar in the wee hours of the morning, the quartet would draw their revolvers and take potshots at the giant cigarette until one of them put it out. It was over 200 feet on the wing, in the dark, under the influence.
Brighton laughs as he tells me this, adding that the outdoor shooting range was all Joe McCain's idea. “He wasn't that bad of a shot,” says Brighton. “He hit it once in a while.”
Behind us, three college kids are hooting over a Red Sox home run, and the scent of broiling meat wafts out from the kitchen. Chris Brighton did his tour in Vietnam and worked undercover for years, got shot at, blown up, stabbed with a hypodermic needle, and threatened with knives, guns, and baseball bats, all with the insouciance of Dean Martin, a cocktail glass in his hand and a wisecrack on his lips. So what if he hasn't eaten a thing all day and puts away the beer like he expects Prohibition to be reinstated? He's entitled.
Saying there's a blonde waiting for him down the street, Brighton gets up from his barstool. As he puts on his coat, it occurs to me that I haven't asked him how he really feels about Joe McCain and what happened that night. Anyway, I don't have to. It's all right there, in his eyes.