Authors: Howie Carr
That's why I had to talk to Bobby. He and his brother had the two big Northeastern wiseguy holding pens covered. Bobby would know who was being shipped out to Boston to testify in front of any new grand juries. Once I knew who they were bringing in, I'd have a lot better idea of what the feds were up to, and that might give me a lead as to why somebody was trying to take me and Sally off the board.
At least I hoped so, because it was a large pain in the ass to have to drive down there. First of all I had to set it up to Bobby over the phone. Of course he can't call me, because I'm an ex-con and a “career criminal” and I have “OC” (organized crime) stamped on my BOP jacket. Plus, I'm not a relative, so I have to call his sister Lori in Charlestown to set up a call. His sister the junkie. Which means I have to bring her a few packets of methadone, which I have to pick up from Salt and Peppa.
I have no idea what Lori's drug of choice is, but apparently she uses the methadone as a kind of chaser. Bobby Bones tells me, don't give it to her too early in the day, she's not supposed to take nothing until she feels bad. I'm guessing she feels bad as soon as she wakes up if she doesn't have some crack or Oxys or heroin or whatever she's on. As a matter of fact, I'm betting the last time she ever felt good, anytime, was when she was in high school, maybe thirty years ago.
Anyway, he can't call until 7:00 p.m. at the earliest, and I ain't spending the day sitting in the front parlor with Lori. I mean, she didn't look all that great when she was seventeen, and if drugs can ruin Lindsay Lohan, you can imagine what they do to a Charlestown project rat. But Bobby Bones always asks, did I cut the little pink fuckin' pill in half, and I always have to lie and say yes.
When she finally gets him on the line, I have to politely tell Lori to get the fuck out of the room, please, and she cops an attitude, so while I'm talking to her brother, I have to throw her another packet of methadone.
Then I have to make sure that my cousin from Malden, a stick-up guy named Gonzo Ronzo, is still there at Lewisburg, because he's the one I have to be visiting officially. Unless you're a lawyer, you only get to visit relatives. So I want Bobby Bones to just drift over while I'm talking to Cousin Gonzo Ronzo, because it wouldn't look good if the feds thought I was catching up with a guy from my old crew.
Plus I had another problem. The shooters had put two bullets in the crankshaft of the Escalade. It was going to take Rocco days to get it back in shape, because he was having to work out of the garage in my condo, since we couldn't very well tow a bullet-riddled SUV through Somerville, Cambridge and Boston all the way back to Roxbury.
I called my car-insurance guy in Davis Square. He's connected, and he reads the newspapers, so I didn't have to tell him much before he figured it out. He offered to total it, no questions asked, which would have been a big favor ninety-nine percent of the time. But he didn't know about the hide. That was a real custom job to begin with, but the bigger problem was, I haven't even seen Marty Hide for two or three years. The word was he'd relocated to Miami, a good late-career move for sure, considering all the work he could get down there from the local Tony Montanas. He's probably even building hides on their yachts.
Good for Marty Hide, but bad for me, because I needed to get down to Lewisburg fast, and I couldn't be carrying a gun under the front seat. All these years later, they could still violate me.
There was only one thing to do. I called Patty and told her we were going out to dinner in the South End, one of those chi-chi joints where eighty percent of the customers are gay, and zero percent were born in Boston.
As soon as the waiter sashayed away after delivering our drinks, Patty narrowed her eyes.
“You must want something, Bench, if you're taking me to a nice place like this.”
“C'mon, honey, relax. I just feel bad about the other night. That's all. Go ahead, drink up.”
“That's another thing. You don't like me drinking, now you're trying to get me drunk. I'm not as dumb as you think I am.”
She was wearing fishnet stockings and a mini-skirt. These guys in here don't know what they're missing.
“Stop staring at me like I'm a piece of meat,” she said. “What do you want?”
I tried on a smile, but it didn't fit. “How'd you like to go to Lewisburg with me for the weekend?”
“Oh, great. What's my second pick, Brockton?”
“Please, Patty, it's not that bad.”
“That's what you said about Otisville too, and it was so fucking cold I swear to God I saw a polar bear.”
“Patty, c'mon. You know, we haven't spent a nice romantic weekend together in quite a while.”
“And we won't have one in Lewisburg either. There's nothing to do there, Bench. Your fucking cousin Gonzo Ronzo always grabs my ass like I'm on the Red Line at rush hour.”
I tried to look hurt. “Babe, you're practically related to Gonzo Ronzo.”
“Like hell I am,” she spat out. “You only want me to go with you so everybody'll be checking me out while you're talking to Bobby Bones.”
She was right about that. If you bring in a broad, it becomes a family thing. Everybody gets to hug each other. That's when Gonzo Ronzo tries to grope her. But I did need “Mrs. McCarthy” for diversion. If you brought in a broad that looked like Patty â¦
“You only got to stick around an hour or so,” I said, “and then you can leave and go shopping.”
“Shopping. In Lewisburg. Oh be still my heart. Can I use my Cracker Barrel gift card?”
I took that as a yes, however grudging.
“Thanks, babe.” I motioned the waiter for two more drinks. “I need you to do one more thing for me tomorrow.”
Now she was really giving me the evil eye. She said nothing. The silence stretched on. We were staring at each other. She was daring me to say something.
“I need you to get a gun permit,” I said. “The Escalade is in the shop and I can't find Marty Hide.”
“So I have to get a gun permit?”
“It's no big deal. I already got it lined up. Hobart'll drive you up to New Hampshire tomorrow, the course is two hours long, and then he'll buy you a piece. I want you to keep it too, you never know these days.”
“Let me guess, it'll be the same kind of gun you have in the Escalade.”
“I wish, Babe, but PDW's are hard to come by on short notice. I'm thinking a six-shot thirty-eight revolver, Smith & Wesson. Real basic, nothing exotic. They're not gonna hit us on I-95. This is just in case we have to do a little walking around in Lewisburg. Anyway, we got a police chief up there in New Hampshire, he'll write you up the permit tomorrow. No waiting, no red tape.”
“How can I ever thank you, Bench?”
“Lotta broads would like a license to carry, you know.”
“Yeah, about as many as would like to spend a weekend in Lewisburg.”
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Walking back to my house from Foley's, I got lucky. My cell phone rang and it was a cop from District D-4, Roxbury, a guy I went to the academy with. I'd helped him out once, on the arm, getting some sneaky shots of his bride with a weightlifter who was out on disability from the Fire Department. It didn't stop the divorce, but it ruined her relationship with the kids, which was all he was really looking for.
And they say cops are crooked. Cops got nothing on “jakes.” And I love the way their funerals are bigger than JFK's now. Actually, with all the new building codes, you end up with a dead jake about once every five years. Most of the time firefighters get killed nowadays, it's because some illegal alien welder working without a permit set the building on fire. But I digress. Anyway, I'd called the cop who owed me a favor for catching his wife in the sack with the hero jake and asked him to let me know if anything turned up on the Curto hit. Less than twenty-four hours later, he called me back.
“We got the gun from Parmenter Street,” he said. “Just got the ballistics back. You know the Blanchard's on Mass Ave?”
A big liquor store on the South EndâRoxbury line. Always had a police detail, for obvious reasons. Every stick-up guy and junkie in Boston left it alone, for that same obvious reason. Everyone except one, apparently.
“An illegal tried to stick up the place yesterday. I saw the surveillance video. He practically nodded off with his hand in the cash register. He was so stoned he didn't even see the cop coming.”
“Anybody I know?”
“The cop or the perp?”
“Very funny,” I said. “Was he using the same piece he used on Sally's nephew?”
“Negative. He walked in with a twenty-two, not even loaded. The gun, I mean, he was plenty loaded himself. After we grabbed him, we found the Curto piece in the trunk of his car, which was stolen, which I know comes as a terrible shock to you.”
“Let me guessâhe didn't have an valid inspection sticker either.”
“We got him for affixing stolen license plates too.” I heard raised voices behind him. “I'll call you back,” he said, and hung up. I clicked on the cell phone to find out the number, and all it flashed was 617, the area code. Balls. I couldn't call him back, I'd have to rely on him to get back to me. That could be ten minutes, or a week.
I was home, working on my second Ballantine Ale, when my phone rang again.
“I'll make it quick, we got a double homicide on Blue Hill Ave,” he said, and I resisted the temptation to ask him what else was new?
“He must have bought your gun as a throw down. A Walther PPK. Gun like that, had to have a history, right? Especially if a junkie was selling it. You'd think he'd at least ask whoever sold it to him where it came from.”
“Like they'd tell him the truth.”
“You got a point there. Anyway, the gun was on top of the spare tire, no attempt to hide it. Complete fucking moron. You want the perp's name?”
He gave it to me. José Cruzâthere couldn't be more than a million of them in Massachusetts. But the address was a surpriseâWorcester.
“How did he get a gun that was just used in the North End?” I asked.
“You tell me,” he said. “It gets odder. He makes his one call, and five minutes later, we hear from his probation officer. Who is also his brother.”
“Really?” I knew the Probation Department was crooked, but this was just plain sloppy. The way it works in probation is, if you're a P.O., your best friend takes your brother, and you take your best friend's brother. Same as the legislature with girlfriends, you hire Mistah Chairman's squeeze and he hires yours. I asked him for the brother's name, it was Pablo Cruz. Like the crappy seventies band, only they spelled it “Cruise,” I think.
I said, “You're kidding me, right?”
Worcester is the Chelsea of the 508 area code. There are worse places than Worcester. There have to be. I pondered for a moment, then remembered who had the most to gain at the State House if the casino bill did a Dixie. Senator Denis “Donuts” Donahue of Worcester. And then I remembered who was in the car that got shot up in Somerville the other nightâanother probation officer, this one suspended.
You know what I need for Christmasâan iPad. If I had one, I wouldn't have had to even get up from my table to walk over to my laptop to check out the website of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance to find out if Pablo Cruz was one of Senator Donahue's contributors. But hell, it didn't take long even using a Hewlett-Packard. Pablo Cruz, whose employer was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, had maxed out to the senator for the last three years.
I had my first lead.
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When I was in Lewisburg on the contempt beef, I did a lot of reading, mainly biographies. I read one on Jimmy Cagney, and for some reason I've always recalled what he said about Joan Blondellâbest ass in Hollywood. I was curious, so when I got out I bought a couple of her old movies on DVDs, and Cagney was right.
The reason I mention this is because that's how I regarded Patty: best ass in Somerville, make that Boston. But damn, she had an attitude, probably because she knew how to strut her stuff. She was a great broad when things were going well, but you wouldn't want her beside you in a foxhole. Now that I think about it, I remember another line from some book I read in the can: “Adversity often brings two people together, but not when they are of opposite sexes.”
These teen moms in the projects, they routinely carry their homeys' heat in their purses. I doubt any of them are busting their baby daddies' balls over it either. And let's face itâPatty had a lot better life than her fellow teenagers. She didn't have to drop a new little bastard every year for an extra $110 a month on the Electronic Benefits Transfer card.
But that didn't stop her from copping a major attitude on me.
Anyway, I rented a new Escalade while she and Hobart were in New Hampshire buying the piece, taking her lesson and getting the permit. They got back around 8:00 p.m. I was sitting by myself in the Alibi, paying some bills as she stomped in in her high heels, Hobart following sheepishly behind her.
“Look at my hands!” she said, thrusting them in front of my face. They looked fine to me.
“They took prints of every one of my fingers,” she said, “like I was some kind of criminal or something.”
“That's what they do when they give you a license to carry, baby,” I said. “It's the law. What's the big deal?” I looked at Hobart and he shrugged.
“You know what else they told me?” she said. “I can't carry the gun in the car, unless it's taken apart.”
“That's bullshit,” I said. “Tell her, Hobart.”
“I did. But she don't believe me. The chief told her she had to carry it on her person. I tried to tell her, her âperson' includes a purse.”