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Father Son & Holy Ghost
Chapter One
Forty one stories below an impatient light bobs and weaves through the thin, middle of the night, traffic in the North End of Boston, now visible now hiding, as an ambulance rushes to its fallen victim. The soundlessness, from the plate glass window, creates an eerie illusion of unreality. Our vantage point sits on the north east corner of Number One Washington Street and the corner of State Street; which has a magnificent view of the North end (the Italian section) to the north, Charlestown and historic Bunker Hill to the west, and the full length of the Boston Harbor to the east. With the Charles River to the far west and the Atlantic Ocean to the far right all of this part of Boston is on display..
To our left is the Charlestown Navy Yard, with the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) in the foreground and the Mystic River Bridge (Boston's Overland Link with the North Shore) as an upper frame. Looking a lot like an Erector Set Toy construction this bridge is a very busy link to the large population living north of Boston.
Sticking up like a rocket about to blast off, behind the dividing line of the bridge is the Bunker Hill monument, reminding us that after losing a battle we could still win the war. Across the Charles River looking toward our position, we come to the North Station, where commuter trains move the cities life blood in and out of the city from the North by train. In the same building as the North Station is the Boston Gardens where the Celtics and Bruins thrill and chill the local sports fans. We can almost smell the wonderful aroma of baking bread sent out by the Stop & Shop bakers like a homing beacon to the harried early morning commuters, their white puffs of smoke over the Boston Gardens like some ancient words drifting on the wind and calming the weary travelers. Moving to the West, and across the central artery is the "North End" of Boston in all its glory. With the Old North Church sitting right in the middle of this replica of any Italian City, with its churches and elaborately designed courtyards, surrounded by tall brick buildings, and grape vines a hundred years old, or more, climbing the outside of those same brick buildings to shade the roof gardens and fill the wine barrels. The "Old North Church's" spire pointing for all the world to Concord and blinking forevermore "one if by land and two if by sea". The North End is the Center of the Italian community of Boston. The food here is as good as the maze of streets are complicated.
Boston's streets from this height look like a mad labyrinth beginning no where and ending in infinity. The designs can only be understood by the original planners and they are not talking. Just at the edge of our central view and above the central artery are two huge black caverns with tar ribbons leading into and out of the Sumner and Callahan tunnels disappearing under the North End, the city's subterranean link with its north shore and its eastern section.
Further to the right, in the distance is Logan Airport, at the eastern edge of Boston's "East Boston" section. The airport is quiet now, except for a rare late arrival. The morning will see Logan bustling with preparations for the early arrivals and departures. Lower in our view is the "Boston proper" side of the Mystic River. With "Anthony's Pier Four" restaurant standing majestically next to the river greeting all arrivals and "Jimmy's Harbor side" restaurant further down on the River's edge hiding behind the Boston Harbor World Trade Center (an old sea-side warehouse converted into a convention center). Behind us and out of our view are many new tall buildings and the Boston Common where many a Sunday afternoon the gentry of Boston stroll or simply relax on the grass.
The clear summer night would be rich with star light in the country side, but here, in the city, the powerful lights and glow of city life dim the heavens. Forty one stories up is a good height to view the city. It is high enough to see for some distance without seeing every brick and stone, but low enough to see a little detail on the ground.. At this level the ordinary street clutter disappears and a larger view prevails. Making the city look a lot cleaner than it really is. Our corner window over the city is large and clear giving a wide open view of its part of Boston.
In our room it is dark except for this window over the city, the drape of the second window in the room is drawn tightly against the night letting the sleeper rest his eyes. The even sounds of peaceful sleep give the room a comfortable “snuggly” feeling. The heavy furniture and dark paneling signals a masculine lair, the cave drawings are a photographers view of New England's winter and local beach scenes. The muted rustling sounds of the sleeping city mix well with the even sounds of the sleeper at 3:00 am on a warm summer night.. The faint smell of after-shave and sweat socks drift in the air. A pile of neatly folded jogging clothes on a chair patiently await the morning’s run. The occasional whiff of air-conditioning simply moves the air around without changing it. The wee hours of a work day in the big city have a feeling unique to Boston.. No big city in the world is exactly like any other and none combine the port city and academic communities like Boston. The short and twisting streets with friendly shops and wonderful smells draw the visitor like a magnet.
Suddenly the air in the room becomes electric as if a crack to another dimension opened . The stillness pounds with eardrum bursting pulses. A sound so faint it’s impossible to identify, yet so intense it fills the room, impossible to ignore. Even the sleeper's soft snores hitch in mid growl as if sensing impending doom. A slight rustle crackles with lightening sparks, a movement sensed rather than seen.. The darkness by the door leading into the bedroom becomes blacker still. A hesitation by the door, as if taking stock of the room . Then a drifting blackness detaches itself from the door and drifts toward the bed. Slight whispers rise from the carpet as the sinister blackness moves across the room. Sending up sparks like lightning bugs, more sensed than seen. The night sounds hush, as though waiting with baited breath. A glint of fiery starlight flashes high in the air. The floating blackness brushes against the edge of the drawn drape of the second window letting in the blazing night light. For a second the room is much brighter and a clear outline is visible until the drape falls back against the window. Silhouetted against this night light is a black drifting presence moving relentlessly across the room.
A slight swish of air stirs the sheets on the bed and a slender feminine hand, with long brightly painted red nails, catches the top sheet and slowly begins to pull it down off the sleeper's body. His tanned muscular body is revealed as the sheet moves lower in the bed. Aware of the sudden cold, the sleeper rolls over and opens his eyes. What he sees makes him recoil in horror and roll away from the friendly feminine hand. Rolling toward the far side of the bed and a hidden gun, the sleeper shouts at the intruder to leave while she still can. "Who is it?" he shouts, and "what's going on?" Shouting more to wake himself than to talk he stumblingly fumbles off the bed and in passing, opens the dresser draw. There's a bright flash of light from the blade of a long handled knife describing a lethal arch toward the sleeper's bare back. In his panic the sleeper slams into the dresser from the side and as the draw falls open, the gun scuttles across the floor away from him.
Chapter Two
One Washington Street Boston, the offices of Fielding Enterprises. Angelo Cataldo arrives for a meeting and is shown into Jon Fielding’s private office.
“Hey Angie, how’re you doing. Thanks for coming over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of the club before.”
“Great Jon, you look good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your offices before, either. This is quite an operation.”
“Angy how is Robert doing. I keep hearing good things about his local operation?”
“He is doing fine. His business just keeps growing, as does the club. We’re always swinging along with the Trio.”
NOTE: The Trio is the Dixieland Band at the Gaslight Club in Boston, which Angelo Cataldo and Robert Cimino own.
“That’s wonderful, well, let me explain why you’re here Angy. I owe you an apology for dragging you away from the nightclub. I love the place and would rather have met you there but, I want to show you around as part of my request. You have by far the best Dixieland Club outside of New Orleans and the most fun place I have ever been to. The women at your club are not only the most beautiful in the city but they are best at what they do anywhere. But I need your detecting skills, not your entertainment expertise.
Now, you haven’t seen anything yet. I’m going to show you around. The office is a small part of the operation. This is just the paper work.”
“Really? I’ve seen about a dozen people so far and this is just the paper work?”
“Come on over to the window, let me show you from here. That building on the water front with the new $75,000.00 water tower on it is my building. That’s the physical plant here in Boston, about 60,000.00 sq ft under one roof. We have one just like it in New Orleans and another in San Francisco. Let’s go down to the garage and my driver will take us over to the plant.”
“Do you do any manufacturing?”
Asked Angie as they got into the car.
Once they entered the town car the driver never said a word he just started driving as the door closed.
“Well, yes and no. We only process food here. We have a full beef processing plant where we get in whole carcasses of beef and separate them into steaks, roasts and hamburger. We also have a poultry wing that receives crates of whole chickens and prepares them for barbecue and roast chicken. We also have a fish processing section that cleans, fillets and packages portions of fish for meals. We handle over two thousand lobsters a week from this section. The back of the plant we also have a section just for dry and canned goods.”
“This is very impressive Jon, but you didn’t call me away from the club to give me a tour of your impressive operation.”
“Of course you’re right Angy, I’m having a problem and need someone to sort it out for me. About three months ago my bookkeeper noticed we were losing some unusual pallets of products. The first one we noticed was in New Orleans. We discovered a pallet of French Fries disappeared.”
“French Fries, that can’t be worth a lot of money?”
“You’re right of course, they are not worth much at all but that’s what we lost. And it was not the only odd losses we incurred. The next pallet to disappear was a full pallet of canned peas. Number ten cans exactly 64 cases of them. Everything that has disappeared is a full pallet. Each pallet is loaded with a different number of cases depending on what the item is. The French Fries are packed 48 cases to a pallet the beef is one huge 2000 pound box full of beef cuts for roast and Hamburg.”
“These pallets a large and heavy, how are they getting them out of the building?”
“We don’t know, of course the dry goods are loaded and set aside, but the perishable items are only loaded just before they are do to be shipped. They just disappear. When we start loading the trailers, those pallets are gone.”
“Is there anything special about any part of the item; the boxes, or actual pallet or the way they’re loaded?”
“We’ve been over this a hundred times and they’re the same old items. The pallets are just dirty, used pallets, the loading process is always the same for each item. The boxes are just ordinary boxes, in most cases, the same boxes they arrive here in are the way we ship them out. We have been unable to find any thing unusual about any of it. The only unusual thing is they disappear.”
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