Killers (11 page)

“I need a favor, Bench,” he said.

I shook my head. “Can't it wait?” I said. “I got my hands full right now. Sally is fuckin' fuming.”

Ditto is Good People. He's one of five brothers who came out of Mission Hill. They always struck me as cop material, but they'd all had a lot of problems early on, so now they worked as security guards at various places around the city. You can imagine how valuable they are to me—schedules, keys, guard uniforms, etc. Being of a certain age (they came up in the seventies), the Foley brothers are also quite proficient with fire, if you know what I mean. We call the youngest brother Frankie Flame.

So I knew I was going to have to listen to Ditto's story.

“It's my son, Bench,” he said. “I wouldn't ask you otherwise, but he's all jammed up.”

I sighed. He wasn't going to take no for an answer. I told him to come into my back office. I shut the door behind us. I knew his son by reputation; he was no damn good, all strung out on steroids, always getting into barroom brawls. Ditto told the story quickly and concisely. That was one of the things I liked about all the Foleys. They didn't waste my time, or anybody else's.

His son had gotten into yet another knock-down drag-out, at one of those so-called sports bars down in the Financial District. A place I tried to give a good leaving-alone to—Charlestown and Southie crackheads, Oxy dealers stacked up on top of one another, the only ones who have any teeth are the ones who'd done enough time to get free dental work in the can. So Ditto's kid, with the proud Irish name of Eamon, had gone nuts and broken the jaw of the son of a retired Quincy cop. The cop was now demanding $25,000 to make the case go away.

“What do you want me to do, Ditto?” I asked.

“It ain't right, Bench,” he said. “This fucking cop is dirty, and his kid's no fuckin' good either.” He noticed that I was looking at him askance. “I know, I know, my kid's an asshole too, but compared to this other kid, he's fuckin' Little Boy Blue. Every time this punk kid gets pinched in Quincy, the father gets his cop pals not to show up in court until the judge throws out the case.”

“How many times's this happened?” I asked.

“Enough so's the kid's starting to think he can get away with it up here in Boston too.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” I smiled. “Has he got any other cases coming up in Boston anytime soon?”

Ditto smiled and nodded. That was when I noticed that he had a manila envelope with him. He fumbled with the clasp, pulled out a wad of dog-eared, Xeroxed police reports and court filings and pushed them across the table at me.

“You know my brother-in-law's a half-assed lawyer, he pulled all these papers for me. Look at 'em. This kid's got at least five pinches in Norfolk County, Quincy mostly. Beats up his girlfriends, possession with intent to distribute, bouncing checks, stolen credit cards, attaching stolen license plates…”

I was thumbing through the papers. “Ditto, they even got him on a couple of chew 'n' screws.”

That's what we call walking out on a restaurant tab. Another name for it is dine 'n' dash. It's real high-school Harry stuff, most guys outgrow it about the time they start getting laid regular. This shitheel was twenty-five years old. I kept rifling through the papers until I found what I was looking for—one of the Boston pinches. I pulled it out and scanned it—OUI. It looked like it hadn't been broomed yet.

“I see a drunk-driving coming up in Dorchester,” I said. “Anything else in Suffolk County?”

Ditto's face lit up. He knew this stuff by heart. See, I have a presence in Norfolk County, but I try to maintain what you might call a low profile. In Suffolk—Boston—and in Middlesex, which is Somerville, that's where I can wheel and deal. Costs a lot of dough, but the alternative is endless cop harassment.

Ditto separated out the Boston cases for me—three were still open—and told me where the ex-cop drank in Quincy. Fortunately, he was a drunk and he worked the third shift as the security officer at a trucking company terminal. I knew the bar he hung in every morning. I was a friend of the guy who owned it. In other words, he took bets for one of my bookies.

“I give this cop a check yesterday for five grand,” Ditto said. “More 'n enough, I'd say. He says if I don't get him another twenty, he'll make sure Eamon goes away.”

“I'll see what I can do, Ditto.”

*   *   *

It was dusk by the time I got back to Somerville. There's a nice new athletic club in Union Square, and I'd gotten a charter membership on the house. Had my own personal locker. I did a half-hour on the stationary bike, then went upstairs and lifted a few weights, no set pattern, just whatever struck my fancy, upper body mostly. I was thinking about who was killing Sally's guys, and when they were going to start killing mine. I showered, changed into some casual clothes I leave in my locker, and headed over to The Middlesex Room in Magoun Square. I owned a piece of it, and I liked to hang there in the early evening before it got too loud.

The Middlesex Room was where the young gash in Somerville congregated—the kind of women who liked hanging with, well, guys like me. I had my pick of the local talent, although for a few years now, I'd been running around with a hot ticket named Patty Lamonica. She'd just turned nineteen. I even knew her parents. She'd dropped out of Somerville High as soon as she turned seventeen, had gotten in with a bad crowd and now I was keeping her on the straight and narrow. Or so I told her parents. I'd even gotten her a job in Teele Square, in my real estate lawyer's office, as the receptionist.

My plan was to stop by the Middlesex Room for a drink or two—I couldn't take much of the KISS-type music anymore. Then I was going to head over with Patty to my place around the corner from the bakery in Ball Square, which was the nearest thing I had to a permanent address.

It was still early when I arrived. Ninety percent of Somerville's population has turned over since I was a kid, but you'd never know it from the Middlesex. It was still 1978 there. Saturday Night Fever every night, even Tuesday.

Patty was sitting with a couple of her gum-chewing big-hair girlfriends, wearing a miniskirt and the traditional fuck-me pumps. She had the largest bust by far—I'd paid $5,000 for her “enhancements.” I gave her a kiss on the lips and then sat down. Most nights, I'd have given her the eye, and her friends would have taken the hint and drifted off. Tonight I was content to zone out, at least for a few minutes, listening to the female gossip. I motioned to the bartender for a round of drinks, and the girls all smiled. They had no idea what was going on in the world—not unless it appeared on Facebook.

I just sat there, half-listening, thinking about my own problems. I still didn't have a clue who was after me—or Sally. There wasn't much wiseguy competition left, Sally and I had seen to that, with a generous assist from the feds. But if this went on, pretty soon Sally's suspicions would center on me, and despite our “partnership,” I was still very much the junior partner, in terms of age and manpower. As long as none of my guys got hit, I was the number one suspect—excuse me, person of interest. Isn't that what the cops say now?

If Sally ever started suspecting me, that would be very bad, for both of us. I was better than anybody he had, but he had more guns than I did.

The worst thing is, ninety percent of the time, it's your friends who kill you. The better the friend, the more likely he is to whack you. There's only so much time you can spend looking over your shoulder before you sprain your neck.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax and enjoy the scenery at the Middlesex Room. They were all good-looking girls—the pretty ones always run together, I've noticed. But Patty was by far the class of the field. She was wearing a low-cut blouse designed to flaunt her new cleavage, and a short leather skirt that showed off her tight but ample Italian ass. Yes, watching her was taking my mind off my problems. I decided it was time for us to leave.

Ball Square—Sally always got a kick out of that name. Growing up in the All-American City, I never even thought about the double entendre until he asked me one day if I ever took Patty over to “Ball Square,” and then started laughing. I guess I'm slow on the uptake.

I leaned over to whisper in her ear and she looked back at me with what they call bedroom eyes. She smiled and nodded.

The valets at the Middlesex knew me, so my Escalade was waiting for us right out front on the curb. I won't say I wasn't paying attention, but it was Patty I was paying attention to, not business. And that's when you're at your most vulnerable, when they catch you flat-footed. Most guys get clipped within a mile of where they live—that's a fact. And here I was on my home turf, on the main street—Broadway—less than a mile from my condo in aptly named Ball Square.

Once we were in the car, Patty playfully started pawing me, teasing me about whether I'd laid in any decent champagne. I told her I was planning on laying something else. She asked me if we were going to Florida anytime soon, and as I was telling her probably not for a while I saw a car coming up fast behind me on Broadway. I glanced back—the one night I needed congestion, nobody was around.

The car was closing fast. Patty was saying something about liking the TVs on Jet Blue when I told her, as calmly as possible, to get down on the floor. She immediately dropped to the floorboards. I saw another car headed east on Broadway, and I drifted over toward the double yellow line, so the hit car couldn't get beside me on the driver's side. That didn't stop them, though. They closed on me from the right side, a dangerous stunt if somebody suddenly pulled out of a parking space on the north side of Broadway.

“Stay down, Patty!” I said, as I sped up to about forty and opened the hide to get my PDW. I knew it was loaded and the lock was off—otherwise it was no good, because I wasn't going to have time to do anything but fire. In the rearview mirror I could see an automatic rifle barrel pointing out of the other car's back window. I wasn't going to have much time. I heard a shot and suddenly all the lights on the dashboard were flashing like a pinball machine.

“Hang on, Patty,” I said, and then I slammed on the brakes. Surprised, the driver of the car behind me kept coming. I put the gun on automatic, and as the car passed us on the right I fired right through the Escalade's front passenger window, raining glass down onto Patty. If I'm lucky, I get the driver. If I miss, the car keeps coming, and the automatic rifle takes me out.

The guy who shoots first almost always wins, or at least that used to be the rule of thumb. But nowadays, if you're using an automatic weapon, it really doesn't matter if the other guy fires first if you're the better shot. The bad guys' car, an old Ford Taurus, undoubtedly stolen, lurched to a halt. The driver was slumped against the steering wheel, blood pouring out of a gaping wound just above his left ear. The guy in the backseat with the rifle seemed frozen, so before he thawed, I fired another burst at him through the back passenger window of my Cadillac. The bullets made a neat line of holes in the Ford's rear door, the rifle dropped onto the pavement and the gunman slid out of sight.

I floored the Escalade, but it was sputtering, and smoke was coming from under the hood. The guy with the rifle in the backseat had done a much better job ventilating the Escalade than he had ventilating me. I was less than four blocks from my condo in Ball Square but I wasn't sure I could make it. I put the pedal to the metal and I still couldn't top fifteen miles an hour. Patty was sobbing, still curled up on the floorboards, her hands covering her head.

I'd have preferred to turn around and get the Escalade into one of our garages at the top of the hill, where the glass could be replaced very quickly and Rocco could come out from Roxbury to try to put the Escalade back in working order, if possible, which I doubted.

But the important thing now was to get away. I momentarily wished I had a throw down to drop at the scene, but quickly thought better of it. Sometimes it's better to play it straight, or at least as straight as you can.

*   *   *

Once I got the Escalade into my own garage, I tried to calm Patty down. She was crying hysterically. Her face and arms were covered with spots of blood where the flying glass had nicked her. Until now she'd only seen the upside of being with a wiseguy—the occasional fur coat from a hijacked load, the best tables with no waiting at the best restaurants, the new cars with dealer plates every six months. She'd never been around during a war.

Inside, I stripped off her clothes and pushed her into the shower. Then I looked through my medicine cabinet and found some Oxys. I turned off the water and picked her up and carried her to the living room—there was no lust, believe me. I just didn't want her to cut her feet on any random shards of glass that had dropped off my clothes. She was still sobbing as I toweled her off and bundled her into one of my bathrobes. Finally I got her settled down on the couch with a glass of gin over ice. I was going for the quick knockout, but she was too excited.

“Why were they trying to kill us, Bench?” she asked.

“I wish I knew,” I said. “It'd make it easier to find them.”

“Did anybody see us?”

“I hope not.”

“I'm scared, Bench. What if they're still coming after us?”

“No need to worry about that,” I said. I came over to the couch, leaned over her and kissed her on the forehead. “Try to get some sleep.”

“I wanna go home, Bench.”

Home was maybe three blocks away, on the other side of Broadway and Powderhouse Square. But the Escalade was wrecked, and besides, all of Broadway would be crawling with cops for hours to come.

“Not now, baby. I have to get another car. I gotta call Hobart and have him bring over a new one, and then I'll drive you home. How's that, hon?”