Yesterday's News

the room. I folded my hands and tried to think of a way to apologize but couldn’t.
    Mrs. Meller returned with a scrapbook. Resuming her seat, she opened it on her lap.
    The first few plastic sleeves held old photos, black-and-white and too small or too large for today’s 35-millimeter standard. She reviewed them quickly, lingering on only two shots: a much younger she and a baby, followed by a noticeably younger she and a gawky fifteen-year-old boy. She glanced at me from the corner of an eye and proceeded until the photos were succeeded by newspaper clippings.
    Mrs. Meller yielded the page turning to me. She had them all. The Globe and the Herald (still the Herald Traveler in those days) carried only the short pieces Liz Rendall had predicted. A candid photo of the young Hagan was attached to the Herald story, a police academy portrait of Hagan in a parade cap in the Globe. I skimmed the articles from the Beacon, which paralleled the content and style of what Liz had told me, down to the “C. E. Griffin” bylines.
    Mrs. Meller had a Beacon picture Liz hadn’t mentioned: Hagan and Schonstein, the latter barely recognizable through the Crusader’s cross of bandages taped over his face. They were entering some sort of public building. The clipping was yellowed and the photo itself expectedly grainy.
    There were eight more clippings in the book. One dealt with the clearing of the officers for their actions that night, and a second was Dwight Meller’s awkwardly brief obituary. The final six chronicled Hagan’s sequential promotions, with an Op-Ed piece broadly suggesting that he was the right man to next occupy the chair of chief.
    I checked to make sure there were no more entries. I realized Mrs. Meller was watching me expectantly.
    My demeanor must have conveyed the unspoken question “Is this it?,” because she closed the book very carefully and formed her hands around the edges, straightening the leaves in a way I couldn’t appreciate or caressing the memories in a way I could.
    I started to say, “Mrs. Meller...,” but realized she wasn’t looking at me. I touched her sleeve, and she tore herself from the past.
    “Mrs. Meller, thank you for showing me this. I lost my wife before her time, and I know that going through all this again wasn’t easy for you.”
    She reached for the tablet. “POLICE KILL DWIGHT YOU FIND OUT WHY TELL ME”
    I said I’d try.

    Wonder of wonders, Richard Dykestra was in his office. Even the receptionist seemed surprised.
    Dykestra came through an inner door when he heard my voice. He said “Hold my calls” to her and “C’mon” to me.
    A scale model of Harborside haunted a table near his desk. Pink telephone message slips were clustered next to a multilined Rolm receiver. I sat on a black leather hammock stitched to a chrome frame. Dykestra plopped into a big swivel chair, his feet resting pigeon-toed on the base of the chair. “Thought me and you had our talk already.”
    “Some things came up. I remembered you saying Jane Rust never bought your explanations. Figured I’d give you the chance to sell them to me.”
    “Let’s hear your questions.”
    “I read Jane’s articles on redevelopment in general and you in particular.”
    “So?”
    “So how’d she miss your settlement with Schonsy on the fire?”
    I wanted to say it like that, watch for his reaction. He was as animated as a freeze-frame.
    “I don’t see what a cop’s fall has to do with any of this here.”
    “You don’t.”
    “No,” said Dykestra. “He’s an old guy, carrying this young kid down some stairs. He don’t watch where he’s going.”
    “Through the smoke, you mean?”
    “Through whatever the fuck was going on that night.”
    “Yet you settled with him.”
    “Yeah. Yeah, I settled it.”
    “Insurance company involved?”
    “You kidding? You know what they want for insurance on them four-deckers? They’re wood. Fifty, sixty years old. Cost more in premiums than I gross in rents.”
    “Then where’s the pressure to settle? Why not let him sue you, drag it out a few years before you’ve got to write the check?”
    Dykestra shrugged. “Guy’s a cop. A fuckin hero for saving the kid and everybody else in the building. Good public relations.”
    “No, Richie. Good private relations.”
    “I don’t get you.”
    “Schonsy seems the kind of guy you don’t shortchange.”
    “Look, I got one of the Porto ’s lives in the place willing to say her uncle smokes in bed,