Killers (19 page)

I stepped between them. “Look, Liz, you got what you wanted, we got business to discuss here.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “You think I don't watch the news? I know what's going on. Somebody's trying to kill you guys.” She looked at me. “I still like you, Bench, you're a gentleman, but him—”

That was it. Sally's nostrils flared and he was having a Sally, the second one in less than ten minutes. I'd never seen them come so close together. He threw his cigarette at Liz and she stepped clumsily aside to avoid it.

“You tell that fuckin' whore,” he said, pointing his finger right in her face, “that I've about had it up to here with her bullshit. I'm through bailing her out, I'm through paying for her abortions, I'm through putting her in them sober half-way houses in East Boston as part of the plea deals in the BM-fuckin'-C. Fuck that! You tell her that—fuck her and the horse she rode in, and for the sake of the fuckin' horse I hope to fuck it's a fuckin' Clydesdale she rode in on, she's gotten so fuckin' fat.”

She just stared at him, her mouth open.

“You tell that no-good cunt, if you want to be somebody's girlfriend, you gotta stay in shape, and nobody ever stayed in shape doing every fuckin' drug in the world, and what's even worse, when she fucks now, it's like fuckin' a dead body, 'cause she's usually nodding off when I hop on top of her. You tell her she ain't the only slut in the North End.”

Now Liz was scared. She made a sudden move toward him, but I pulled her back. Interrupting Sally in the middle of a Sally would be the worst possible thing to do. It was like he was possessed; if he was interrupted maybe he'd never come out of it, like in some made-for-TV horror movie, I forget the name of it.

“Shhhhhh,” I said to her. “Let him come out of it by himself.”

She put her arms around me and cooed, “Oh, Bench,” but I pushed her away. Sally was right about her; her days as the siren of Salem Street were way behind her. Sally was breathing heavily now. That meant he was coming around. Finally he blinked and shook his head. Then he saw Liz and he grimaced.

“You got your money,” he told her. “Now get the fuck outta here.”

Her head down, she slinked out of the room without a word and closed the door softly behind her.

“If she ever goes to Rosa,” he said, “I swear to God, I'll, I'll…”

By which he meant I'd get the contract.

“Don't sweat it,” I lied. “The cops got her cold on this last beef. She'll be gone soon enough. She ain't gonna be bothering nobody from Framingham.”

Sally shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit up.

“Christ,” he said. “I wish to fuck it was 1973 again.”

Poor Sally. He was going to have his wish come true about the time I got Tommy Callahan's burp gun back.

*   *   *

This time when the cell phone rang at three in the morning I was sleeping at my condo just outside Ball Square. Patty turned on her side fitfully, so I grabbed the phone and tiptoed quickly into the living room. I didn't even have to look at the number to know who was calling.

“They hit the check-cashing place on the Lynnway—killed my guy Vito, shot him in cold blood, no fucking reason,” Sally Curto was yelling so loudly that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “You tell that Irish prick I gotta see him right away.”

I glanced out the window into the parking lot. There were a couple of light poles—it was, after all, a “luxury condominium”—and I could see that a steady rain was coming down. No Carson Beach meetings this morning.

“How about the garage?” I said.

“The garage?” he said, in surprise. He doesn't like talking inside. Neither do I, for obvious reasons.

“It's okay, Sally. I got the guy coming in today with the equipment, first thing in the morning.” Sometimes the trooper wasn't too punctual about getting over, but I knew he would be there today. While he was there, he wanted us to total his car for him. It was a professional courtesy for our friends in law enforcement.

“He'll be there right at eight,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

“Two guys walked in, just before closing. Americans. Wearing ski masks. Don't make no sense, in the first place, it's a check-cashing place, not a bookie joint or a bar. At the end of the day they got less money then in the morning.”

“And less security.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“So your guys called the cops?”

“Of course they called the cops.”

“Which means it'll be on the news this morning.”

“Yeah, so what are you getting at?

“I don't want to talk on the phone. Drive into the third bay, it'll be open at eight. I got a couple of ideas.”

*   *   *

Sally came by himself, another sign of how agitated he was. Or maybe what I'd told him about Blinky had sunk in. No Blinky, no Benny Eggs—maybe Sally was coming to his senses. When he drove inside, I shook his hand and guided him past where one of my tow trucks was smashing into the cop's Lexus sedan. The cops used to burn their old cars in the Allston rail yards, but the feds had run a sting out there a few years back, and then Harvard bought the land and put some real security on the gates. It had been a big break for my business, and for my relationship with the local constabulary. My garage had no windows. It was the perfect place to commit insurance fraud.

I'd told the statie to sweep my office first, so Sally and I could speak in there. Once we got in I flipped on the all-news radio station and turned it up high, just in case. I took Sally's overcoat, got him seated in a chair across from the desk with an ashtray for his smokes, and then sat down in my office chair.

“Sally,” I said, “I been thinking about this a lot. I don't think we're dealing with wiseguys here.”

He looked confused. “Who the fuck else would it be?”

“Hear me out,” I said. “You used to do stickups, right?” He nodded, a little warily. He enjoyed “do you remember” conversations about as much as I do. “What's the best way to do a stickup?”

“One guy, of course.”

“Of course. That way, no one to whack up the pot with, no one to rat you out.”

Sally frowned. “Some guys, they do their first one with another guy. That way, they can't back out if they get cold feet.”

“You ever get cold feet?” I asked. “I mean, even when you were a kid.”

“Fuck no.”

“Me neither. You either got it or you don't, that's the way I see it. You go in by yourself. Unless it's a bank or an armored car, of course.” I was never actually in the car on any of my armored-car jobs. I just lined 'em up for Bobby Bones; I never went out on the heists myself. The jeopardy was just a little too much. But I did banks, and I almost always used four guys on a job. Three inside and one outside, the driver. Most guys'll tell you, the best guy to use as the driver is your brother, because if it's your brother in the car, it cuts down the odds that he's going to leave you high and dry. There's nothing worse, coming out of a bank, no car, and all you've got in your hand is your dick. Too bad for me, I didn't have a brother who could back me up. That's why I used my cousin Gonzo Ronzo whenever possible.

I said to Sally, “You don't need two guys to take that check-cashing place of yours. Besides, what's the point of icing one of the clerks but not the other one? There's no point in icing either of them, because they sure as shit ain't calling nine-one-one if it's just a robbery, right? But if you gonna hit one of 'em, don't you hit the second one too?”

“Bench, I keep telling you, we're dealing with junkies here. Nothing has to make sense.”

“Listen to me,” I said. “It makes perfect sense—but only if you're trying to make the news. One guy's dead, that's news, two is more news, but if you want to keep the story going, you need a witness who can talk about the shooters in ski masks blah-blah-blah.”

Sally fumbled for a cigar in his overcoat. “What are you driving at?”

“Look,” I said. “This ain't about starting a gang war between us. That's not what they're trying to do.”

“Who's ‘they'?”

“—I'll get to that, but hear me out first. Everything they've done is for the news splash. Sally Curto's nephew gets hit, Bench McCarthy gets clipped on Broadway—that's what they wanted, and what the fuck was that all about, by the way? Did that make any sense? If they want to take me out it'd be a lot easier to get me with a rifle walking out of the Alibi. Fuck, you're always telling me I'm becoming a creature of habit, right?”

“What I told you was, that's how your uncle Buddy got it.” He lit up his stogie and took a long drag. “But that's ancient history. All I want to know is, who's behind this, and when are you going to kill them?”

“Sally, I wish it were that easy. If it were, I'd already have taken care of it. Somebody's using us as pawns.” I was trying to go slow. Sally may not be the swiftest gazelle on the savanna, but if you lay it out, point by point, he gets it. This, however, was above his pay grade, I don't care where he is on those DOJ LCN charts. I was about to take it to the next level.

“Sally,” I said, “did you read the
Globe
yesterday?”

“Fuck the
Globe
. They ruined the city with their fucking busing.”

“Listen to me. Sometimes people use the
Globe
for their own agendas, you know what I mean?”

His eyes narrowed. “Go ahead.”

I opened my top desk drawer and got the copy of Ted McGee's column out and pushed it across the desk. He took it in his stubby fingers and slowly lip-read it. After about a minute he looked up at me.

“I never read such a load of shit,” he said, and then he stood up, started pointing at the wall and began yelling. He was going Sally again. This was getting to be a problem. In peacetime, this maybe happened once a month. Now he was folding under the pressure.

“You tell that no-good motherfucker I want him over the Dog House tonight, and I don't mean no fucking maybes either. And on top of everything else, you misspell my name, you drunken Irish motherfucker.”

He was shaking. He was talking directly to McGee, who needless to say wasn't there. “You, you rat cocksucker, are you trying to get people killed? What the fuck you think you're doing? I'll fuckin' tear your black heart out, you dirty piece of shit.” Sally took off his porkpie hat and threw it at the wall. I heard a knock on the door; one of my drivers wanted to know if everything was okay. Obviously, this kid hasn't been around the garage very long. Most of the guys had heard these kinds of rants from Sally at least once or twice. I went to the door and handed the kid a couple of twenties and told him to go buy a round of coffee for the garage.

“Black for me, regular with two sugars for the other guy,” I said, nodding in the direction of Sally, who had quieted down somewhat but was still muttering a steady stream of obscenities in the direction of the wall. Before I could shut the door one of the pit bulls, Atomic Dog, got inside and jumped up on Sally and started sniffing his crotch.

“What the fuck is this?” Sally bellowed, batting Atomic Dog away. “Is this dog queer or what?”

“It's a female, Sally. She loves you.”

Sally scowled, but when I told him maybe he should take a load off, he reluctantly sat back down. Atomic Dog curled up at his feet. He reached down and stroked her head. Tyson was going to be jealous when he saw this.

“This motherfucker McGee, I got a good mind to drop him where he stands,” he said. “Just hit him in the head. Bap-ba-beep-boop. You understand American?”

“Sally,” I said patiently, “whoever's paying him to write this shit, clipping the asshole would just be a bonus for them. Guy'd be a hero, he can't testify that he ever took a payoff. They'd name a scholarship after him at BU.” I shook my head. “No, we gotta play this thing cool.”

Sally took a long drag on his cigar, which was now wet and all bent at the non-lit end. “Are you telling me that somebody's actually paying him to write this shit?”

“That would be my guess. This guy McGee has been for sale for years. He's the one who kept writing ‘Whitey kept the drugs out of Southie.' And I'm also thinking that the same guys who are paying off McGee are paying the people who are trying to kill us.”

Sally leaned forward across my desk. “Why?” he said. “Only place we're big shots now is in the papers. Why go to all this trouble to take out two guys that ain't got two nickels to rub together?”

It wasn't quite that bad, especially for Sally. He was twenty-five years older than me. He'd come up near the end of the golden age of wiseguys, and he got in a few years running the numbers—back when they called it nigger pool—before the Lottery killed off just about every kind of gambling except pro football. Sometimes, after a few drinks, he'd brag about how much dough they used to make, him and the Angiulos. For me, it was more of a struggle. Cripes, I was on the hook to Henry Sheldon for twenty-five large.

“Sally, you notice in that column how McGee isn't really interested in us getting shot, he's worried about sinking this casino bill.”

“Fuck casinos—nothing there for us except crumbs. Wish there was something big we could grab but it's not 1975 anymore. We go in there, try to talk to whoever gives out the licenses, the feds'll have the office wired. Closed-circuit cameras too. Might as well be on TV. Hell, we probably would be on TV, that same night most likely.”

“You know that, and I know that. But if they can make it seem like we're having a war for control of casinos, then maybe they can stop them.”

“Who's ‘they'? I ask you that before, you don't tell me. Who is ‘they'? I thought everybody was for casinos now.”

“Not everybody, apparently. I'm guessing ‘they' are the people who don't have the juice to get the licenses right now. I don't know exactly, I'm not inside. But don't you see, Sally,—if all of a sudden a bunch of bodies start piling up, it looks like the wiseguys are fighting it out and this is the future if the state legalizes casinos.”