The Friends of Eddie Coyle (15 page)

The revolver kicked hard against the man’s bent right arm. As it kicked, Biggers was coming out of the chair to protest. The slug caught him in the belly and he reeled backward in the chair. The second slug hit him just to the right of the center of his chest and tipped him over the right arm of his chair, the surprised, innocent, protesting look still on his face.

“The rest of you motherfuckers,” the man said, “get in the fucking vault.”

The tellers began to scramble. Nancy Williams had a perplexed expression on her face.

“Get in the fucking vault,”
the man said. He waved them into the vault. He slammed the door behind them and spun the locking wheel. “Come on,” he said.

The second man was already halfway down the corridor to the rear entrance, carrying all three bags of money. In the business area of the bank, Robert L. Biggers bled over the arm of the chair, the blood dripping down slowly onto the gold and orange carpeting, the look of stunned, protesting innocence settling into the features of his face.

In the parking lot the two men hurled the bags of money into a white Plymouth sedan. In a green Pontiac sedan, the first man sat with Harry Burrell. The man who had shot Biggers shouted: “Bingo. For Christ sake, Bingo.”

The first man brought his revolver up and whacked Harry Burrell at the base of his skull with the barrel. Burrell sagged off to the left of the rear seat. The man stripped his mask off, opening the door as he did so. “I’ll get him,” he said. “Same place. Go.”

The other two men were backing the Plymouth around. It
left the parking lot swiftly, but without peeling any rubber. When it reached the parking lot in front of the bank, it was moving quickly, but not conspicuously so. Each of the occupants had removed his nylon stocking.

The green Pontiac emerged from behind the bank and swung through the parking lot. It proceeded east, in the direction opposite from that taken by the other car.

The receptionist spoke apologetically. “I asked him for his name, Mr. Foley,” she said, “and he wouldn’t give it.”

Foley said that was all right and picked up the telephone. “Foley,” he said.

“This is Eddie,” the voice said. “I know you’re busy and all, but I was wondering how that turned out. Did you make the grab?”

“Yeah,” Foley said. “I was going to try to get in touch with you and then I decided it’d be better if I didn’t. Yeah, it went fine, just fine. He had five M-sixteens, just like you said.”

“Okay,”
Eddie said. “Glad to hear it. He’s gonna get indicted and all?”

“I think so,” Foley said.

“Fine,” Eddie said. “Now does that do it?”

“Do what?” Foley said.

“You said you needed a reason,” Eddie said. “That day I saw you, we talked about this New Hampshire thing, and you said you needed a reason. You gonna come up there with me now and tell them what a nice guy I am?”

“You mean that truck thing,” Foley said. “The booze.”

“Hey, Dave,” Eddie said, “don’t jerk my chain, okay? You know what I mean. You gonna go through for me?”

“I already made the call,” Foley said. “I called the U.S. Attorney up there and I told him you were instrumental in bringing about a major arrest, and that as a result of your cooperation, we confiscated five stolen military machine guns and arrested a known dealer in stolen guns. Okay?”

“I hope so,” Eddie said. “You think it’ll work?”

“I dunno,” Foley said, “he’s pretty mean, that guy up there. He took it all down and I asked him what he thought of it, and he said: ‘Well, it’s a start, anyway.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Eddie said.

“I told him we couldn’t’ve made the case without you, and he said: ‘All right. Now, is he working on anything else for you? I’d like it better if he was working on something else for you.’ ”

“Anything else?” Eddie said. “He isn’t satisfied?”

“I don’t know whether he’s satisfied or not,” Foley said. “I’m telling you what he said. He said he’d like it better if you were working on something else for us. You know how it is, it’s one thing to just go and trade one guy for another one, but when you got a guy that’s joined up, that’s going to be sending you some more stuff, well, you got more to go with, is all. I suppose that’s what’s on his mind.”

“Shit,” Eddie said.

“Hey look,” Foley said, “I don’t blame the guy. He’s in a different
district, you know? His guys grabbed you and grabbed you fair and square. And you didn’t plead out on him, you made him go through a trial and you didn’t have a prayer of winning, just because you didn’t want to play ball with him.”

“He wanted me to fink on the guys that stole the stuff,” Eddie said.

“Well, I know that,” Foley said. “You can’t blame him for that, can you? And you wouldn’t tell him. So he convicted you and now he’s got you in the box, and somebody from another district calls him up and says: ‘Coyle did
me
a favor. Leave him go.’ It’s only natural the man’s going to say, ‘Well, that’s very nice, but what’d he do for me? I still don’t have the guys that stole the booze. Why should I be doing favors for a guy that isn’t doing me any favors?’ And what do I say to that? I’d feel the same way, I was to get a call from somebody in New Hampshire telling me Jackie Brown did something for him. Dandy. But what’s Jackie Brown done for
me?
”

“
Is
the kid doing anything for you?” Eddie said.

“Let me put it this way,” Foley said. “I think he’s giving it some very serious thought. I kind of dropped it on him he was looking at a five-year stretch, and we might have to turn him over to the State, even though we didn’t want to, and if we did, well, if the State catches you with a machine gun, it’s life and forever plus two years on and after. He asked me what he’d probably get if he was convicted in federal court, and I leveled with him, I said it depends on the judge, probably anywhere from two years minimum to five years, the full route. Then, by then he’s been arraigned and made bail and so forth, and we’re in the elevator, and he says, ‘Okay, I’ll be seeing you, I guess. Where do I get my car back?’ And I give him the look and then the bad news: ‘You don’t get the
car back, Jackie,’ I said. ‘That car was a vehicle being used to commit a crime, to transport contraband. It’s forfeited to the United States of America.’ And he looks at me like he can’t believe it and he says he paid four thousand dollars for the car, and I tell him, ‘Look, I know how you feel. But we don’t have no choice. That car is gone, and you might as well get used to it. It’ll be put into government service. Kiss the car goodbye.’ So he looks at me and I tell him some more: ‘The guy that had that Charger I’m driving,’ I said, ‘he felt the same way. It’s a tough thing, but there it is.’ So he knows we’re not kidding,” Foley said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he came around.”

“Look,” Coyle said, “I can’t give him the guys he wants in New Hampshire. You got to call him up and explain that to him. If I do that I am dead, is all there is to it. He can’t ask me to go out and commit suicide for him.”

“He’s not asking you for anything,” Foley said. “He didn’t ask you for Jackie Brown. That was your idea. You’re the one that’s asking for something.”

“You were the one that said it,” Coyle said. “You said you hadda have a reason. So I give you a reason.”

“That’s right,” Foley said. “I said I wouldn’t make any calls for you unless you did something for me. So you did something for me, and I went through, I made the call, just like it was our understanding. But the man I made the call to, he never got into this. He didn’t say he’d go to the judge if you got us a grab. He didn’t know a goddamned thing about it. I never said he did. You tipped us on Jackie so I’d make a call for you, and I made the call. You just don’t like what the call got you. I can’t help that, Eddie. You’re a big boy now.”

“So now I got to do something for him,” Coyle said. “How
the fuck do I do that? I’m never up in New Hampshire, I don’t know anything about what’s going on up there.”

“You knew about the booze,” Foley said. “You knew and you wouldn’t tell. You were a stand-up guy. Stand-up guys go to jail, in most jurisdictions I know about.”

“I couldn’t tell him about the booze,” Eddie said. “They’d’ve killed me. He should be able to understand that.”

“He probably does understand it,” Foley said. “And anyway, he isn’t saying—he didn’t say you had to tell him about the booze. He said he’d like it better if he could go in to the judge and say you were a guy that made one good case for the uncle and was working on some others. Then he’d feel better about it, because it’d show that you rehabilitated yourself, that you weren’t just giving us a ransom for some time in jail for you. What he wants is something like that, is what I think.”

“You’re telling me I gotta turn stoolie permanent,” Eddie said. “Permanent goddamned fink.”

“I’m telling you nothing of the kind,” Foley said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, except one thing: you got to be in federal district court in New Hampshire in three weeks for disposition of a charge of stolen goods. That you got to do. If you don’t, they’ll put out a capias on you and the marshals’ll pick you up and drag you in. But that’s the only thing you got to do. Anything else you do is because you want to.”

“It ain’t right,” Eddie said. “You set me up.”

“Look, Eddie,” Foley said, “you go some place and have yourself a glass of beer and a long talk with yourself. The only one fucking Eddie Coyle is Eddie Coyle. You wanted a call. You gave me a grab to get the call. You got the call. You want something else, you start thinking about how to get that. You know where to
reach me. You don’t want to reach me, that’s also all right. No hard feelings. We’re fair and square. I can certainly understand a man doesn’t want to rat on his friends. I know that. You got to understand the position I’m in. All I can give you is what I tell you I can give you, and I gave you that. What you do next is entirely up to you.”

“I should’ve known better’n to trust a cop,” Eddie said. “My goddamned mother could’ve told me that.”

“Everybody oughta listen to his mother,” Foley said. “You know where to reach me if you want to talk.”

Corporal Vardenais of the Massachusetts State Police was eating breakfast at two o’clock in the morning at the Eastern Airlines lunchroom at Logan Airport. Propped before him was the
Record.
He was reading a story headlined: “
2ND BANKER DIES OF WOUNDS IN W. MARSHFIELD STICKUP
.” The story said that Branch Manager Harold W. Burrell had died of a skull fracture suffered three days before when he was pistol-whipped during a sixty-eight thousand dollar robbery. It mentioned the shooting to death of Robert L. Biggers.

Wanda Emmett, wearing her Northeast uniform, took the counter seat next to Corporal Vardenais. “You say hello to your friends since you got promoted, Roge?” she said.

“Hey, Wanda,” Corporal Vardenais said, “how you hitting them?”

“Not bad,” she said. “Not good. You know.”

“You coming or going?” Vardenais said.

“I just got in,” she said. “I got the Miami run now. Out yesterday, back today.”

“Good trip?” he said.

“You know,” she said, “not much business this time of year. I kind of like it this way, but then I start thinking how it’ll be in a month or so, whole plane filled, screaming kids, women always wanting something. I get just as down thinking about it as I do when it actually happens. Funny, huh?”

“What’re you doing over here?” Vardenais said.

“I left my car here,” she said. “I was late getting here when I went out and the lot was full. So I left it here.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d drive,” Vardenais said. “Ought to be simpler to take a cab over, I should think.”

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t live over Beacon Street any more. I moved out.”

“How come?” he said.

“Well,” she said, “I got a better offer. At least I thought it was a better offer at the time. I was sick of Susie and her goddamned curlers, and then I heard about this other thing, so I moved out.”

“Where you living now?” he said.

“You aren’t gonna believe this,” she said. “Up in Orange. I live up in Orange.”

“God,” Vardenais said, “that’s way up and hell and gone. How far is that, about a three hour drive?”

“Couple hours,” she said. “I was thinking, it’d be good for skiing and all. It wasn’t a very good idea.”

“You got an apartment up there?” he said.

“Trailer,” she said. “I live in a trailer.”

“How are them things?” he said. “I was thinking, I got my tax
bill last week, and I was thinking maybe I should look into one of those things. Are they all right?”

“You couldn’t do it,” she said. “You got, how many, two kids? It’d drive your wife nuts. I mean, there’s only two of us, and sometimes I’m not there, and still, it’s awful cramped and all. I don’t think you could do it. There isn’t any place to put anything, you know? And you can’t get any privacy at all. You wouldn’t like it.”

“I guess not,” Vardenais said. “Jesus, though, it just about breaks your heart when you get that tax bill. I start thinking, it’s costing me about two, three dollars a day just to live in that town.”

“Hey Roge,” Wanda said, “we’re still friends now, aren’t we?”