traffic stop at midnight—on the surface way out of character for an old family man like Sergeant O’Malley. But then a first transgression was compounded by a bigger one: he threatened her. The woman got it on tape, and with the speed of the self-inflicted bullet that would soon end his life his career as a Boston cop was over.
As the oldest son, Cyrus was the responsible male. He’d take a year off, get a job, help with the bills, help his younger brothers and sisters and a shell-shocked mother who’d cloistered herself at their church. A year turned to two, then three. He wasn’t ever going to return to the shaded campus. His books would stay in cardboard boxes. He’d need a better job with higher pay to keep supporting his brothers and sisters. His father’s pals greased the skids. He aced the qualifying exams with perfect scores, and he became a Boston cop. He didn’t really want it, he never wanted it, but that’s what he did.
With grim determination he decided if he was going into police work he might as well do it well, better than his old man.
Smart cops became detectives. Smart detectives sometimes went to the FBI.
Yet he always felt he’d left a part of himself on the BC campus and was forever reminded of his academic cleft. His ex-wife had gone to Wellesley, his former neighbors on both sides were Harvard men, Stanley Minot actually wore his Phi Beta Kappa pin from Columbia, special agents with Ivy League degrees were all over the Boston bureau; even Avakian was a bigtime U Mass alum. He tried to be philosophical about his truncated collegiate life but such moments as these brought back unpleasant memories, bitter ones that puckered his mouth like a shot of unsweetened espresso.
The grandiosity of the quadrangle dazzled and depressed at once. He imagined how it might feel to be one of these students, treading on a lawn covered in gold maple leaves the color of success, hurrying to afternoon lectures in deep-welled lecture halls steeped in a century of tradition.
In another life, he thought, not this one.
Alex looked out his office window down onto the quadrangle and spotted the man who surely had be the FBI agent. He took a sip from a water bottle to wet his throat that was acidic with fear. He had a minute or two to compose himself: with everything to lose and nothing to gain, what choice did he have but go through the motions, try to be helpful, act clueless, and then in a worst-case scenario, feign indignation?
Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? If they only understood what the stakes were, they’d let him finish his work in peace. Throughout history great minds were always persecuted. He was close but he needed time.
Just a little more time
.
Down a long echo-chamber hall, Cyrus passed a dozen closed doors until he found Weller’s nameplate. He rapped his knuckles against frosted glass and entered. Three lab workers bathed in harsh fluorescents looked up from their benches and one of them, a man only in his twenties with a long white lab coat and bad skin, asked harshly, “In the right place?” He had an incongruous townie accent and a coiled toughness that didn’t fit the profile of a plummy academic laboratory.
“I’m looking for Alex Weller.”
The man had his name stitched onto his lab coat in red thread:
Frank Sacco
. “You expected?”
Cyrus sent him scurrying to a closed office at the rear by tersely telling him he was from the FBI. The others, young Chinese women, put their heads down and minded their own business.
The lab was an old-world space on one of the floors that had so far escaped renovation, a turn-of-the-century room with period floorboards and dated soapstone countertops; but it was packed with twenty-first-century electronics and analytical instruments. Cyrus involuntarily sniffed at the acetone vapors hanging in the air. Every few seconds he was startled by a harsh vibratory whir when one of the women pressed a test tube against a mechanical
As the oldest son, Cyrus was the responsible male. He’d take a year off, get a job, help with the bills, help his younger brothers and sisters and a shell-shocked mother who’d cloistered herself at their church. A year turned to two, then three. He wasn’t ever going to return to the shaded campus. His books would stay in cardboard boxes. He’d need a better job with higher pay to keep supporting his brothers and sisters. His father’s pals greased the skids. He aced the qualifying exams with perfect scores, and he became a Boston cop. He didn’t really want it, he never wanted it, but that’s what he did.
With grim determination he decided if he was going into police work he might as well do it well, better than his old man.
Smart cops became detectives. Smart detectives sometimes went to the FBI.
Yet he always felt he’d left a part of himself on the BC campus and was forever reminded of his academic cleft. His ex-wife had gone to Wellesley, his former neighbors on both sides were Harvard men, Stanley Minot actually wore his Phi Beta Kappa pin from Columbia, special agents with Ivy League degrees were all over the Boston bureau; even Avakian was a bigtime U Mass alum. He tried to be philosophical about his truncated collegiate life but such moments as these brought back unpleasant memories, bitter ones that puckered his mouth like a shot of unsweetened espresso.
The grandiosity of the quadrangle dazzled and depressed at once. He imagined how it might feel to be one of these students, treading on a lawn covered in gold maple leaves the color of success, hurrying to afternoon lectures in deep-welled lecture halls steeped in a century of tradition.
In another life, he thought, not this one.
Alex looked out his office window down onto the quadrangle and spotted the man who surely had be the FBI agent. He took a sip from a water bottle to wet his throat that was acidic with fear. He had a minute or two to compose himself: with everything to lose and nothing to gain, what choice did he have but go through the motions, try to be helpful, act clueless, and then in a worst-case scenario, feign indignation?
Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? If they only understood what the stakes were, they’d let him finish his work in peace. Throughout history great minds were always persecuted. He was close but he needed time.
Just a little more time
.
Down a long echo-chamber hall, Cyrus passed a dozen closed doors until he found Weller’s nameplate. He rapped his knuckles against frosted glass and entered. Three lab workers bathed in harsh fluorescents looked up from their benches and one of them, a man only in his twenties with a long white lab coat and bad skin, asked harshly, “In the right place?” He had an incongruous townie accent and a coiled toughness that didn’t fit the profile of a plummy academic laboratory.
“I’m looking for Alex Weller.”
The man had his name stitched onto his lab coat in red thread:
Frank Sacco
. “You expected?”
Cyrus sent him scurrying to a closed office at the rear by tersely telling him he was from the FBI. The others, young Chinese women, put their heads down and minded their own business.
The lab was an old-world space on one of the floors that had so far escaped renovation, a turn-of-the-century room with period floorboards and dated soapstone countertops; but it was packed with twenty-first-century electronics and analytical instruments. Cyrus involuntarily sniffed at the acetone vapors hanging in the air. Every few seconds he was startled by a harsh vibratory whir when one of the women pressed a test tube against a mechanical
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