Chapter 6

The following character is introduced in this chapter:

Charles Bulfinch

One of America’s first architects; built many buildings and tunnels in Boston and Salem; later he was the architect that President James Monroe hired to build many government buildings in Washington D.C. where he also built tunnels.

Appearing in the kitchen of our apartment on leaving the North End, I was greeted by the smells of a hot meal that Jill had prepared for me.

“Thank you, I really need this,” I told her, as I sat down at the table. “With all of the Magic that I used tonight, I need to replenish all of the energy that it used.”

“What did you learn?” she asked.

“You mean aside from the fact that the life of a ‘made man’ isn’t all that exciting most of the time?” I asked with a smile.

“Oh, and ours is?” she replied with a smile. “Driving around and doing a lot of research on the computer isn’t all that exciting. Of course there are the few moments of terror or excitement when something actually does happen,” she finished.

“To get us back on track, yes, I did learn a number of new things tonight. Frank ‘the Fish’ isn’t as fierce as he is made out to be, but appears to be lucky at cards. Carmen ‘the Cheese Man’ DiNunzio and his Brother, Tony, ‘the Little Cheese’ are both overly heavy in the three hundred and fifty pound plus range.

“While visiting their condominium, I overheard them in an argument and learned that those who paid to be introduced to the Atlanta Mob were from Salem and that the DiNunzio’s considered them fanatics, though they appear to pay well for the services they want,” I told her.

“Salem ... are we talking about the same town where the Witch Trials were held in 1692?” Jill asked.

“The very one, and it would appear that three hundred plus years haven’t changed the minds of some of them,” I told her.

“What else did you learn?” she asked after a short pause.

“That those living in that fancy high-rise on Prince Street don’t have a very impressive view out their windows. The place is surrounded by three and four story tenements, and basically what they see is the backs of those buildings. The place is probably also extremely expensive,” I told her.

We had no idea of just how expensive it was until Jill used Paddy’s computer to look the place up later. The price to buy or even rent one of their condos was sky high starting at close to a million dollars to buy a tiny condo and going way up into the multiple million dollar range. There was also an annual fee to cover the cost of utilities and other things that approached a thousand per condo. Additionally there was the annual real estate tax which runs around ten thousand dollars for even an average size condo.

“You would have to be an idiot to live there,” she told me when I returned from buying supplies with Paddy the next morning.

While she had been on his computer on Wednesday morning, we had gone to the big box construction supply store where I purchased rope, zip ties, duct tape, leather gloves, and gallon cans of gasoline. Paddy had picked up the normal electrical supplies that he uses. There had been no problems or any questions asked. Paddy stocked his supplies in his shop while I transferred mine to our apartment so I could prepare a couple of nooses to have ready.

I had been worrying about several things since my recon of the previous evening. The most obvious was that if ‘the Fish’ was found hanged here in Boston, it would alert those in Salem to our presence. Therefore, I needed to rethink what I was going to do with ‘the Fish’.

I could go to Salem and try to locate those belonging to the Magic Haters group, but I had no idea who I was looking for, or where I might find them. For that, I needed the information that I hoped ‘the Fish’ had. This just led to a vicious circle, therefore something else needed to be considered.

First, we needed information about Salem and the area surrounding it. More research would be necessary for that. Jill could do that while I decided what to do with ‘the Fish’.

“Jill why don’t you do some research on Salem, while I figure out what to do with ‘the Fish’. This thing is more complicated than I had thought,” I told her.

“I can do that here on Paddy’s computer easily enough,” she agreed.

“Not a good idea, sweetie. If they backtrack to see who was checking on Salem when we finish there, that could get him in trouble.”

“There is the South Branch of the Boston Public Library just down the street. They have computers for public use,” Paddy told her, before she left to check out the library. It being a Wednesday, Paddy had told us that it was open from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Meanwhile, I was considering ways to deal with ‘the Fish’. One of the ways I considered was to hang him in an abandoned building, but they were often used by the homeless and also the street gangs. Buildings under construction were considered next, but he was sure to be found quickly there.

“What about buildings under construction that aren’t being worked on presently?” I asked Paddy after explaining my problem.

“They are all guarded and checked regularly to ensure that the hoodlums haven’t gotten in and broken things or spray painted graffiti all over the place,” he told me killing that idea. This left me with the unacceptable idea of holding him under a freeze spell and taking him to Salem with us. This was unacceptable on so many levels, just the least of them being the possibility of being stopped by the police and having them discover him in the vehicle. There also appeared to be nowhere that I could leave him here, while we went to Salem. This left me with a real conundrum.

Jill had been at the library for a number of hours before she returned very upset.

“That place is nothing but a den of iniquity,” she exploded after closing the door to the shop. “As if the Witch Trials of 1692 weren’t enough, if even half of what I read today is true, the place should be wiped from the face of the earth with fire and brimstone,” she finished in disgust.

“Cool down, sweetie, and explain what you mean,” I told her. She took several deep breaths.

“These stuck-up New Englanders who like to put on airs and pretend to be so much better than us Southerners are mostly just a bunch of back stabbers and cut throats, and Salem has been a festering pit of betrayal, death, and murder for three hundred years,” she continued, still hot under the collar.

“That’s still not very informative,” I said, waiting for her to calm down.

“Salem has had smuggler tunnels under it since at least the last half of 18th century. More were dug to avoid paying the import tax that President Jefferson had imposed. Even more were dug by Elias Hasket Derby, Jr. Much of the funding for them came from the Salem Common Improvement Fund. The tunnels ran for three miles from the port into town. They connected to many stores and the houses of the wealthy, plus such institutions as the East India Marine Hall, the Essex Institute, the Peabody Academy of Science, the Essex Bank building, the Old Town Hall, the Assembly Hall, the Salem Lyceum, Hamilton Hall, and the Salem Marine Society.

“There were many supposedly important men behind all of this starting with Elias Hasket Derby, Jr, but also including Supreme Court Justice Joseph Stacy, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield and his brother Congressman Jacob Crowninshield. Senators Nathaniel Silsbee, William Gray, and Benjamin Pickman, Jr in addition to lawyer Daniel Webster and financiers George Peabody and J.P. Morgan.

“A number of them were agents for several British Banks that wanted to control the American Banking system. Three presidents, Polk, Tyler, and Harrison, were killed when they refused to go along with their schemes. Massachusetts Chief Justice Isaac Parker was murdered by Daniel Webster because he accused him of being a traitor in the 1812 war.

“There was also Thomas Perkins who smuggled in opium and Chinese workers along with runaway slaves to work at his various sweatshops in Lowell.

“Many of the fancy mansions that were built in Salem for those supposedly famous and influential men were designed and the construction was supervised by Charles Bulfinch who also designed and built many of the major buildings and the tunnels for smuggling in both Boston and Salem as well as Washington D.C.,” Jill finished.

“Wow, hold up there a minute, sweetie. What tunnels in Boston?” I asked in a very interested voice.

“He built many of the houses on Beacon Hill as well as many other important buildings. He designed the Boston Common and built the Federal Street Theater and the State House. Much of the dirt from the tunnel building went to fill in areas along the Charles River,” she told me.

“Where did you learn this?” I asked.

“While doing my research on Salem. He built houses and tunnels there too,” she replied.

“Do we know where any of these entrances to the tunnels here are?” I asked, as it had occurred to me that it would be an excellent place to hide Frank ‘the Fish’ until I was ready to hang him.

“Oh yes,” she replied with a smile. “Their printer was nearly out of ink and was expensive to use. Fortunately, I had the flash drive that we had used previously with me, and I downloaded many of the articles that I read to it.

“There was a PDF of a newspaper article from 1994 on another subject, but I skimmed through it and found addresses where there were reported to be entrances to the tunnel system,” she told me. We used Paddy’s office computer and printer to print out a number of pages from the various articles she had downloaded.

Quickly pulling out our large map of the Boston area, we located many of the addresses listed in the various articles. Paddy advised us that many of them were inaccessible or covered by other construction now. There was one address, however, that stood out from the others. This was the Second Harrison Gray Otis house. It was listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic places. We learned it had been built between 1800 to 1802 by Charles Bulfinch, and that it is one of the few standalone houses remaining on Beacon Hill.

A quick check on Paddy’s computer revealed that there were a complete set of plans, elevations, and pictures of both the inside and the outside of the house from 1968. Everything seemed to be covered with the exception of the basement of the house. This seemed unusual to me, but I suspected there was a reason ... a very good reason that it had been omitted.

“I suspect that the plan for the basement was omitted because there is something down there that they didn’t want revealed to the public,” I told Jill and Paddy after we had thoroughly examined the plans, photos, and the information in the report.

“You mean like an entrance to the tunnels?” Jill asked.

“Yes, and perhaps more than one entrance,” I told her.

“Paddy, can you drive us over to the Beacon Hill area. We’ll walk around there and check the various addresses to see what we can find?” I asked.

“I can drive you over there, but is the house still inhabited?” he asked.

“It apparently was in 1968,” Jill told him.

“Let me check a source,” he said and moved over to the computer and began typing. Shortly he looked up and smiled.

“No, the owner died and no one lives there currently. It’s being cared for by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts which owns the house next door at 87 Mount Vernon Street. It’s a rather small organization, and doesn’t even have sufficient members to have tours of their headquarters, let alone a second building,” he told us before closing down the computer.

Being late afternoon by now, traffic was heavy, just as Paddy had warned us it would be, but it wasn’t that far away, so it didn’t take that long to arrive there.

“Should I wait for you?” he asked before we exited the van.

“No, that won’t be necessary. We’ll just transfer back to the apartment when we are finished. Thanks for bring us over here,” I told him. As the light grew dimmer and the shadows lengthened, we walked around the Beacon Hill area for a considerable time checking on the addresses in the article. Paddy had been correct, most were not accessible now or had ceased to exist.

“That leaves us with just the Second Otis house,” I told Jill. It was quite dark by now, but we had no trouble locating the 85 Mount Vernon Street address, as it was indeed one of the few free standing houses remaining in the area.

“Look at those chimneys,” Jill remarked, as we could see the outline of the chimneys in the light from the first quarter moon, which had risen very late that morning and wouldn’t set until after midnight.

We had no trouble accessing the property, and just walked up the brick paved walkway. The sloping grade of the land revealed part of the basement wall and its four windows, each one a little smaller than the previous one because of the slope of the ground. There were bars on the exterior of the windows and what appeared to be plywood covering the windows on the inside. We just transferred through it and into the basement. Paddy had lent us a powerful battery powered light which Jill turned on to reveal a large area that apparently hadn’t been visited or cleaned up in a very long time.