THE BLUE SUIT
Private conversations with the Blue Suit, arguably the most knowledgeable and politically connected piece of off the rack clothing in the city of Everett.
Tuesday I picked up the Blue Suit, this time in an orange-red late model BMW I’ve been driving.
I picked him up at the end of Elm Street. He was wearing a winter jacket, standing alone in the cold on a kind of dreary, overcast day when snow was predicted.
It finally feels like winter although we’re more than halfway through it.
Monday evenings snowfall was beautiful but short lived. There wasn’t much accumulation.
By Tuesday, the snow was already melting away.
We drove down Elm Street – it was shortly before noon.
“We passed the newly redone and reopened Elm Street Market. “Look at that,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“Yeah. Great job redoing the place,” I added.
What we see where the Elm Street Market is located is the new Everett in its clearest iteration.
What does that mean?
The Elm Street Market was a one story stand alone building, decrepit and old, in need of a complete rehab.
So what happened?
The new Everett springing up all around happened.
The owner hired a contractor – a well known Everett guy who knows what he’s doing. With financing from Everett Bank, a major rehabilitation of the market and expansion of the property took place.
The property went upward. The market was entirely redone. And I think something like four or five living units were added above onto two floors. I don’t believe there are any parking spaces, but in the new Everett, this didn’t seem to matter much.
The final product we looked at, well, the Blue Suit had this to say.
“Wow! What a nice looking building this turned into. And from the top floor apartments, you get sunlight and gorgeous views out the windows of Elm Street stretching to the Chelsea Revere line.”
The Blue Suit knows of what he speaks.
The modern construction is crisp and clean looking. There is some detail and a mixture of building materials giving the structure today the look and the feel of a very tight, environmentally sound and thoroughly modernesque insulated building with all the bells and whistles.
All in all, as we agreed: “What an improvement.”
Our thoughts meandered about.
We joked about the Patriots. We wondered about Tom Brady.
We discussed John Henry and Chaim Bloom being booed at a Red Sox summit.
We settled on the man of the hour, Brian Walshe.
The murder story involving him and his beautiful younger wife has captivated folks in Massachusetts and frankly, across the nation.
“Hey, that guy Brian Walshe. He’s been charged with murdering his wife. Do you think he did it, Josh?” the Blue Suit asked me.
“You know in this country we are all considered innocent until proven guilty,” I joked. “But to answer your question, let’s look at what we know.”
“First,” I said, “this guy Walshe claims he didn’t kill his wife. He pleaded innocent in court recently. But, and this is just one of many buts,” I said, “First he apparently lied to police about when his wife disappeared. Then he was caught on video tape shopping for cleaning materials at a Home Depot. He bought $450 of cleaning materials. He was wearing a mask and rubber gloves. He paid cash.”
The Blue Suit smiled.
“What the hell do you think he was cleaning up, Josh?” he asked me.
“Maybe he cut himself and cleaned that up,” I answered.
We laughed.
“I’ll give you ten guesses and if you can’t figure it out correctly on the first one, you have to fast for 40 days and nights – a biblical period of time,” the Blue Suit said to me.
I pretended to think seriously for a moment. Then I answered.
“OK. Let me guess. He was cleaning up his wife’s blood from the basement of his home where police searching the home found blood all over the place and assumed he must have killed his wife there.”
“That’s not a good sign, is it?” I added.
“Next,” I wondered, “what are we to make of Walshe’s claim that he had nothing to do with the disappearance and or the murder of his wife after police checking his computer found he had been searching the Internet for ways to dismember a body, and wondering as well, how and when bodies start giving off an odor.”
“What do you think of that?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“I think the guy is a pathological liar. Do you know he told the police he visited his mother’s home in Swampscott after his wife disappeared?” the Blue Suit asked.
“Yeah. He said he got lost in Swampscott while searching for his mother’s home. What do you think of that?” I asked.
“Getting lost in Swampscott?” the Blue Suit replied.
“You couldn’t get lost in Swampscott if you tried!” he exclaimed.
“You’ve got that right my friend,” I added.
As we drove down Broadway we wondered what Walshe must be thinking while locked up inside a jail cell.
“Did he believe he had committed the perfect crime like a character from Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ masterpiece? Did he believe he could get away with a botched murder, a botched clean-up and a botched alibi? Did he believe in his own mind that he could get away with murdering his wife in his basement, trying to clean up the blood, buying cleaning materials, reading Internet solutions to dismemberment and the such and get away with it?” we said in unison.
“God no,” I said.
“He must clearly be out of his mind. Did he really think he was going to get away with committing such a heinous crime?”
“That’s the real question,” I added.
“But then again, the real question is whether or not he is innocent or guilty. Did he kill his wife and dismember her or did he not? And if he didn’t do it, then who did!”
“Before he can be convicted of murder, his wife’s body must be found. Without a body it is difficult to get a guilty verdict in a murder case.”
“You know the police searched several dumps and found a hack saw covered in blood and bags of cloths soaked in blood,” I pointed out.
“That’s circumstantial, Josh, the Blue Suit argued.
“He’s innocent until proven guilty,” he added with self-satisfaction.
We both had a hearty laugh over that statement.