The Strangler by William Landay Page B

conveyed
there, there
and at the same time
stop hugging me, let me go
. A little chill went through her. Ricky was a consummate faker, but tonight he could not even be bothered to fake for her. He just wanted a playmate. Maybe that was all there was to Ricky, at least that was as much of him as Amy would ever have. Was it enough? A sentence repeated in her mind:
I don’t know if I can do this anymore.
But she did not say it. Probably she never would say it. She would never possess him, she knew that. Ricky was nimble and sheathed in an athlete’s confidence, and of course he was a man; he was not available to be possessed. She wanted him anyway. And if he never married her? Was it worth spinsterhood, did she want him even at that price? Yes, she thought. Yes yes yes yes yes.
    “Ricky, I love you, you know.”
    “Okay.”
    “No, the correct response is ‘I love you too, Amy.’”
    “I love you too, Amy.”
    She squeezed him. Yes yes yes. Maybe a few months earlier, she might have felt differently. But now she and Ricky were entangled. And in the year of the Strangler, well, even if all Ricky had to offer was his charm and his good strong back, Amy thought it might be enough. She had a sense that the city’s mood—the Strangler hysteria, all that mean, selfish, instinctive fear which everyone seemed to feel—carried with it an insight. What was happening in Boston was a passing revelation: The Strangler had taught them there was no safety inside the herd. Everyone was vulnerable. Death could strike out of a clear blue sky, like Oswald’s bullet. If that was true…then yes yes yes, she did want him, at any price.
    “Come on, let’s go. We’ll hear some music, you’ll feel better.”
    “Okay,” she said.
    He bustled around, gathering up her coat and purse before she changed her mind. He held up the statue. “Bring Him?”
    She shook her head.
    “Right, there might be a cover.” Ricky turned to place the statue back on the counter carefully. “You know, for a second there I thought you were going soft on me.”
    “Never,” she said to his back.

9
    Suffolk Superior Court, Thursday afternoon.
    There was a sense in the courtroom at times like these that they were not adversaries. They were a team, fielding their different positions—judge, lawyer, clerk—working together toward a common goal. The outcome of the case was certain. All that remained was the tying up of loose ends, reading the correct words into the record. It was an unspoken awareness. You tended to feel it when weekends or holidays loomed, in summer especially, on Friday afternoons when everyone was anxious to bug out. A certain contented lassitude crept into the lawyers’ voices. They referred to one another with amiable, anachronistic formality as “my brother.” The familiar formulas spilled out of their mouths quickly and with evident pleasure. They were insiders, technicians, and they were wrapping up.
    Michael—who relished these moments of teamwork, these truces—spoke without notes, one hand resting in the pocket of his suit coat, JFK style. “It is a hard case, obviously, and the Commonwealth is not unsympathetic to the situation Mr. and Mrs. Cavalcante find themselves in. But then, they are all hard cases and this is all settled law. Like most of these old tenements in the West End, the Cavalcantes’ building was taken by the government in a proper exercise of its power of eminent domain. As tenants in the building, the Cavalcantes’ lease was immediately terminated by operation of law and they became tenants by sufferance, with no standing to raise these sorts of Fifth Amendment or Article Ten objections.” Michael heard the facile, bloodless tone in his own voice, but hadn’t they been through the drill before with these old West Enders? It occurred to him there might be time for a haircut that afternoon, and his pace quickened again. “However, to touch on the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims: First, there is no