Read Online The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide by Dick Lehr - Free Book Online Page B

see around the corner from their apartment. The house had white aluminum siding with black trim. There were four bedrooms—two on the second floor and two on the third—and two bathrooms, a luxury for a neighborhood where a single bath was the norm. The Conleys closed on the house on November 3, 1977, but could not move in. No one had lived in the house for years, and the inside was a wreck. “We did a total gut job,” said Kris, Kenny’s twin sister. They made the move three months later, just before the Blizzard of ’78, the nor’easter that dumped more than twenty-seven inches of snow on the city between the morning of February 6 and the next night. The renovation was not finished and the interior was always a work-in-progress. This was because Maureen Conley decorated the house herself, and then she’d do it over again.
     
    Kenny’s bedroom was on the third floor at the top of the stairs. It had a sliding French door opening into a brown-paneled room his parents had carpeted wall-to-wall with navy-blue carpet. His mother chose a color scheme of red, white, and blue, and everything was matching. She decorated the room with ceramics she and her girlfriends made at a local shop.
    The second bathroom was on Kenny’s floor. It had a rear window opening onto the second-floor roof. His parents stored an eight-foot ladder on it, and during the summer they’d climb out the bathroom window and use the ladder to get to the third-floor roof. They kept folding chairs up there for sunbathing. To the north, there was a view of the sprawling Edison utility plant and the shipping terminals along the waterfront. To the south was a steeple from the Catholic church on the next block.
    The family room, or den, was in front on the second floor overlooking H Street. This was where the kids hung out, where the large TV console was stationed, where Maureen was at her most imaginative. One wall featured a fake fireplace that, when turned on, made crackling sounds and flickered with phony flames. “The room had a country feel,” Kris said. “It sounds tacky and crazy, but it worked.”
    The move to 78 H Street was hardly a big one for Kenny, his two sisters, and their parents—just around the corner from the apartment on East Fourth. They now faced the side of the telephone company building instead of looking out onto Tar Hill, the parking lot behind the building. But there was one key difference—their stretch of H Street was atop one of Southie’s hills. Looking south on a clear day, Kenny was able to glimpse the ocean waters of Old Harbor off Carson Beach, the main beach in Southie.
     
    The corner at H and Fourth Streets, along with the next corner—H and Fifth—defined Kenny Conley’s universe. “Nothing’s changed since I lived here,” he once said while standing on H Street as a grown man. As a little boy Kenny made friends who then became friends for life. His best friend, Michael Doyle, lived on East Fourth in a house located between Kenny’s old apartment and his new house. “In front of his mother we called him Mike, but 90 percent of the time he was just Doyle,” said Kenny.
    Kenny, Doyle, the other Mike—Mike Caputo—and other pals turned the corner of H and Fifth into their own Fenway Park for wiffleball. Using the same kid ingenuity that had led to sledding down Tar Hill, they made the four street corners the bases. Home plate was located at the southwest corner—which meant hitters drove the wiffleball slightly uphill and upwind. Games were interrupted by passing cars almost always occupied by a neighbor or relative. Between games they’d take a break and wander into the variety store at the northwest street corner (third base). The store, where Kenny’s parents often sent him to buy bread or milk, was owned by Mike Caputo’s parents. Kenny usually bought a Pepsi and Reese’s peanut butter cup.
    The boys owned the corner—a hangout after school and during the summers. In the ninth grade, Kenny