Killers (23 page)

A: Your Honor.

To control Probation Department patronage, the legislative leadership needed a commissioner they could control, a front man. A guy from Boston would raise eyebrows in the press; he would automatically be assumed to be at best a hack, at worst a white-collar wiseguy.

At this point Donuts stepped forward and nominated as commissioner Drew Amato—a chief probation officer who had the added advantage of being … Donuts' cousin. Katy beamed as she told me that; she was proud of her little tidbit and far be it from me to say “I already knew that.” Being from Worcester, she continued, Amato, like his cousin, was presumed to be too lame to represent a serious threat to anyone. Donuts and his cousin might be hot stuff in Worcester, but anybody from east of 128 could roll them, no problem, or so the leadership figured.

This legislative takeover of probation had occurred about four years ago, and since then the hacks had been running amok. The judges, greedy pricks that they are, wanted more, and not only did the legislature tell them no, they cut the budgets of a couple of the more vocal judges to put an exclamation point on their refusal to share the wealth.

None of this was exactly a state secret—almost every new connected probation hire was snidely reported in the
Herald
, although the
Globe
didn't deign to even mention such low-rent effluvia. Presumably the Globe editors didn't want to embarrass their fellow travelers in the judiciary. It was all so incestuous among the Beautiful People, and Katy wanted so desperately to pass muster with the PC Police. She'd even taken to calling sex-change operations “gender reassignments.”

“Let me guess,” I finally said. “Finally, a delegation of distinguished jurists, most of whom drifted into Massachusetts from New York, went to see the capos di tutti bow-tied bum-kissers of Morrissey Boulevard, all of whom blew in from the Hamptons and Park Avenue.”

“It's always 1953 to you, isn't it, Jack?”

“More like 1853. You're familiar with the Know Nothings, I presume?”

Her great-great-great-great-grandfather had been the governor back then. Oh, how her ancestors had despised Roman Catholics. The Yankee mobs burned convents back in those days. I still have the sign above my mantel that I bought years ago at the JFK Library—“No Irish Need Apply.” God, how Katy had hated that sign.

“Now I'm starting to remember,” I said. “
Globe
runs a big Sunday story putting together all the little
Herald
stories about the probation hackapalooza, and the judiciary is shocked—
shocked.
And the very next day a blue-ribbon commission—a Pabst Blue Ribbon commission—is set up, and now the feds have a grand jury investigating how Amato's wife and daughter got jobs at the state Lottery after he ran a time for the state treasurer with about a hundred of his P.O.s there.”

She nodded. “And of course the Lottery jobs are the ones everybody wants because they're union and you can't be fired if the treasurer runs for governor, which they always do, including this one. And he's going to lose like all the other ones.”

So between the grand jury and the blue-ribbon commission, Amato was going down for the count. Even if he wasn't indicted, he was going to be fired. He needed a soft landing, and what could be softer than a sinecure at one of the new casinos? But as the number two guy in the Senate, Donuts couldn't deliver much. Even as majority leader, he was still basically a coat holder, until he ascended to the throne.

If, however, this year's casino bill suddenly imploded, which it now had, then it would be up to Donuts to pick up the pieces next year. The King is dead, long live King Donuts.

The guy who had been arrested with the gun that killed Sally Curto's nephew—he'd been on probation. He was from Worcester. He'd used his one phone call to reach out to a probation officer who happened to be his brother, who was duking a grand a year to Donuts. It's a small world, isn't it? Plus, one of the two guys who'd opened fire on Bench on Broadway in Somerville—he'd just gotten out of the can too. And the guy in the back seat was a fired probation officer.

Everything was falling into place. But I still couldn't figure out how they knew which places to hit, although I had a feeling Bench McCarthy might be one step ahead of me on that piece of the puzzle.

I hurriedly got up from the table.

“Hey,” said Katy, “where are you going? What is this, the old dine 'n' dash?”

Yet another line she'd picked up from me. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a double sawbuck and threw it on the table.

“I'll be in touch,” I said, heading out onto West Broadway.

*   *   *

Slip Crowley, my old pal on the Boston City Council, got his start on the Boston Licensing Board. He'd been the driver for a winning candidate for governor, and he'd begged for the job of chief secretary, the guy in charge of patronage in the Corner Office. But Slip had turned out to be a little rough around the edges for that position—he was always demanding cash from strangers who wanted jobs, even Republicans.

So the governor gave him something where shakedowns were just part of the overhead and no one would ever complain—the Boston Licensing Board, which handled all the liquor licenses in the city. All these years later, Slip still had a few people up there. Before I met Katy at Meg's, I'd asked him to pull the file on Santo's/the Python for me.

“Santo's?” he said. “That dump on Bennington Street?”

“I see you've been there.”

“You know what I'm always looking for when I'm running for office?” Of course—a bullet. Slip ran at-large. Every voter got to cast ballots for up to four candidates, because there were four at-large city councilors. But a vote was worth a lot more if it was a “bullet,” a single vote. A second vote, for somebody else, meant that you just broke even with the other candidate. Anybody who voted for four candidates … well, there weren't all that many voters in Boston that stupid.

“East Boston's one of those places,” Slip said, “where I always think twice about asking somebody for a bullet. Don't want anybody to take me literally, you know. And let me tell you, I would never, ever ask anybody in Santo's for a bullet. Not unless I'd made a good Act of Contrition first.”

“They call it the Python now.”

“A rose by any other name…”

“What do you know about Santo's?”

“It's been a bad place for forty years.”

“East Boston's changed a lot in forty years.”

“The language, maybe, but Santo's is still a magnet for assholes.”

“Can you find out who owns it for me?”

“I can find out who's listed as the manager.”

“Do the right thing, Slip.”

 

21

WHEN HENRY MET SPIKE

I was holding court at my Allston outpost, Grogan's Run. Believe it or not, some guys don't like to go into either Somerville or Roxbury. So I was negotiating with a couple of tailgaters from Southie. They wanted to know how many cases of cigarettes I could take. I asked them how many could they get. Every time the legislature jacks up the tax another dollar an extra pack my bootlegging business goes up another thirty percent. Cigarette smuggling is a bigger racket now than it was in the sixties.

It's gotten ridiculous, how much smokes cost. After all the taxes, a carton of cigarettes now costs around $100 in Massachusetts. In New Hampshire, it's “only” $56, and of course it's even less in the tobacco-growing Southern states. The local taxes were so onerous that the five-mile zone just south of the New Hampshire border was starting to look like Syria, with nothing but abandoned convenience stores, gas stations and packys, none of whom could compete with nearby New Hampshire's lower prices.

Every time the legislature hiked the cigarette excise tax yet again, the DMZ would creep another mile or so south. The state economy was withering away, but for cigarette smugglers, it was boom times.

I was haggling with the Southie crew over price before rather than after the “heist” because the drivers read the newspapers too, and they understand their loads are suddenly worth a lot more dough. The Southie hijacking crews know better than to ask me to front them anything, but they wanted a number on how much they could expect from the job.

None of these were what you'd call real “hijackings,” of course. The driver just turns over the load to his friends, and they pay him off. That's why they were asking about money. I'm positive the truck driver had other crews putting bids in too. Hell, he wouldn't be much of a Local 25 Teamster if he couldn't get at least a little auction going. The guys I was dealing with, I offered them top dollar because the profit margin now was too great to risk losing a load over a few hundred bucks. They were satisfied with the price and all I asked in return was that not all of the Marlboro Lights and Newports go missing before the truck got to my warehouse in Everett.

I don't mind a few random cases of Parliaments and Merits and Alpines thrown in with the popular brands, but please, don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

We'd about wrapped up our business when my cell phone rang. It was Hobart.

“Spike Tierney's on his way over to see you,” he said, and I groaned. Spike Tierney was a hothead, a loser, a drunk. I motioned to the Southie guys that we had a deal and that I'd catch up with them later. I kept the phone to my ear as we all stood up and shook hands and then I sat back down to talk to Hobart.

“I thought he was still in on that weapons beef,” I said.

“I guess he got out.”

“He looking for work?”

“No, he's looking for his girl.”

“His girl? What am I, fucking Craigslist?”

“His girl is Dottie. She was over here drinking the other night, remember?”

“What's she look like?”

“She looks like every other skank hanging out here.”

In other words, twenty-five going on fifty-five.

“So he just got out,” I said, “and now he's trying to run her down because she sent him a ‘Dear Spike' letter. Is that it?”

“Something like that, I guess. I thought you might want a heads-up.”

“You didn't tell him where I was, did you?”

“Fuck no, are you kidding? He just walked out. I told him she'd been in here, but I guess maybe he figures you know something I don't. He's working the circuit.”

I hung up and considered the possibilities. Spike was a real red-ass, just what I didn't need. But then it occurred to me that for once in his life, perhaps Spike could do something worthwhile for me.

About five minutes later, Spike Tierney swaggered in. Gone five years, and he was acting like he'd never left. He sauntered over to my table, a big smile on my face. He thrust his hairy paw out and I stood up to shake it.

“Bench, it's been a while.” He sat down, uninvited. That was a bad habit he had picked up in the prison mess. “Listen, I need a favor.” Who didn't?

“Remember my girl Dottie? I been looking for her all over town since I got out. I can't find her nowhere. If I didn't know better, I'd swear she's giving me the swerve. But I hear she's at the Alibi the other night, and I am wondering, do you talk to her?”

“Dottie?” I said, furrowing my brow, pretending to give it some real thought. “Dottie Ballou, right?”

“That's it, Bench. Dottie Ballou. A real doll.”

If he thought Dottie was a real doll, then she hadn't been visiting him much down at MCI-Norfolk. She'd put a lot of miles on that chassis of hers during the five years he'd been away. Whatever Liz McDermott was guzzling, Dottie was drinking double.

“Dottie?” I said, laying it on thick. “The night she was in my place, I think she was with Henry Sheldon.”

“Henry who?”

“Henry Sheldon. He's a loan shark down Weymouth. Big fat fuck.” I grimaced. “I don't mean to be the bearer of bad tidings here, Spike, but I thought they were an item, you know what I mean?”

His lips curled into a frown, more than a frown, actually, more like rage.

“Henry Sheldon, huh?” he said. “Where's this motherfucker's office?”

I had to tell him. What are friends for? He stormed out of Grogan's Run. I got up and watched him climb into an old, beat-up Dodge, of all things. It looked like about a fifty-fifty shot Spike could make it as far as Weymouth in that POS. I was also watching to make sure he hadn't forgotten the quickest way to Weymouth. He turned right and headed north on Market Street, toward Storrow Drive to the Turnpike Extension. Poor Henry. I figured he had about forty minutes to live.

 

22

THE MOTHER'S MILK OF POLITICS

God, I hate to park downtown. I don't care if I'm running a cheat sheet or not, it still pisses me off to pay thirty dollars for a couple of hours. But I had a stop to make at City Hall. By the time I got to the seventh level of the Government Center garage, I was dizzy from going up all those flights in circles. The elevator smelled of urine, but that was better than the only other thing it could have smelled like.

City Councilor Slip Crowley was sitting in his fifth-floor office, feet on his desk, watching a rerun of
Charlie's Angels
and smoking a Kool.

“Take a load off, pal,” he said, motioning toward a chair. “I don't know how much good this is going to do you, but I pulled everything in the file on Santo's.”

The folder was fairly light, but I didn't have much time.

“Gimme the CliffsNotes version,” I told Slip.

“Last year, month of February sticks out,” he said.

“And why would that be?”

“They didn't get closed down once that whole month.” He crushed out his cigarette. “You may remember, that was the month there were three blizzards. Or was it four?”