All Our Yesterdays (26 page)

I
t was sunny and seventy-two with a small breeze coming off the Mystic River. Gus sat at an outdoor table of a fast-food restaurant near Wellington Circle with Pat Malloy and two of his crew. They were drinking coffee. Malloy had his black, with two packets of Sweet’n Low. The sound of traffic on the Mystic Valley Parkway was steady in the background. Gus sat beside Pat Malloy on one side of the table. One of Malloy’s brothers, Kevin, sat across from them beside Chuckie Dugan, who was a cousin.

“Nobody meant to buzz the Girl Scout, Gus,” Malloy said. “Besides, she ain’t even dead.”

“I told you it was going to happen, Patrick,” Gus said. “And I told you that when it did the shit would hit the fan.”

“So you’re a smart guy,” Chuckie Dugan said. “So what?”

Gus turned for a moment and looked at Dugan. He was young, maybe twenty-four, a body builder wearing a World Gym tank top and a thick gold chain at his neck. He had a lot of black hair combed straight back. He stared back at Gus.

“You know what Flaherty has done,” Gus said to Pat Malloy.

“Yeah. When I saw that I said, hey, this is great. I mean, if Gus can’t control his own kid, who can he control? Huh?”

“I don’t control him,” Gus said.

The tables were on a poured concrete patio outside the fast-food restaurant. A ragged line of crabgrass had forced its way up in along the crack where the concrete of the patio met the hot top of the parking lot.

“Chuckie?” Pat Malloy said.

He nodded his head at the empty paper cups on the table. Chuckie Dugan got up and went to get more coffee.

“Black,” Pat Malloy yelled at Chuckie, “couple Sweet’n Low.”

“Okay, I hear what you’re saying,” Pat Malloy said to Gus. “I got kids. I understand. You don’t control them, sure. But you divert the suckers, you know. You kind of steer them around trouble, best you can.”

“Kid cleans this thing up, mean a lot to him,” Gus said. “I’m going to help him.”

Chuckie Dugan swaggered back with the coffees. He put one down for Pat Malloy and another for Kevin. He left Gus’s in the middle of the table, took his own, and sat down. Gus paid no attention. He was looking at Pat Malloy.

Pat Malloy said, “Are you fucking with me, Gus?”

“I may.”

“Or you may not?”

“Or I may not.”

“Or you might end up in the ground,” Pat Malloy said.

Gus shrugged.

“Everybody does,” he said.

Pat Malloy drank some of his coffee. Then he sat back and folded his arms and stared at Gus. A truck
hauling tandem trailers went by on Route 28 and the surface of the coffee trembled with the vibration of it.

“That what you got me out here to tell me?” Pat Malloy said. “That you’re going to help your kid try to bust me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What exactly did you say, Gus?”

“I want the kid to get credit for saving the city. I didn’t say it had to be you.”

“Butchie?”

“Maybe.”

“Or?”

“Anybody,” Gus said. “Long as somebody takes the fall, and the shooting stops. Don’t matter to me who goes down.”

Gus jerked his head at Chuckie Dugan.

“He’d do.”

Chuckie Dugan said, “Hey, asshole.”

“Sure he would,” Pat Malloy said. “Or my brother Kevin. Huh? Shit, how ’bout my old lady? Gonna dump somebody, might as well get something out of it.”

Kevin Malloy grinned. Chuckie Dugan saw him and grinned too.

“You can pick him … or her,” Gus said.

“Pat, what’re we talking about?” Chuckie Dugan said. “I could dump this asshole right here.”

Pat Malloy grinned.

“You think so?” Pat Malloy said.

Chuckie Dugan looked puzzled for a minute, but he pushed on.

“Sure, and if we need to we dump his kid later.”

Gus turned his head slowly and looked at Chuckie Dugan. His face was blank. Then he reached across
the table and took a handful of Chuckie Dugan’s hair, stood, and yanked him forward across the table. Gus brought his knee up as Chuckie sprawled toward him and drove it into Chuckie Dugan’s face. The blood came at once. Gus slammed him to the ground and let go of his hair and kicked him in the stomach. Gasping, Chuckie rolled away and tried to get up and Gus kicked him again in the face and Chuckie went backwards, still scrambling. He got unsteadily to his feet, the blood streaming from his nose, one eye already closing, his arms up trying to protect himself, backing away as Gus came toward him. Gus put his left hand in his jacket pocket and came out with some brass knuckles. There was no expression on his face. He hit Chuckie with the brass knuckles on his protecting forearms and, when he dropped them in pain, on the right side of his face. Gus’s hands were very quick. He hit Chuckie three times with the brass knuckles while Chuckie was going down. On the ground Chuckie curled into a ball, half conscious, only instinctive now, trying to get away from it. Gus kicked him in the kidneys. Chuckie’s body jerked every time Gus kicked him. The tank top was soaked with blood.

“Gus,” Pat Malloy said.

Gus ignored him. He moved around the balled form on the ground, kicking it methodically, carefully, without hurry. Pat Malloy got up and waddled over and stood carefully in front of Gus.

“Gus,” he said again.

Kevin Malloy had a gun out, a Glock 9-mm. He rested it on the table, waiting for his brother to tell him what to do. On the ground Chuckie moaned a little.

“I can’t let you kill him, Gus.”

Gus’s breath was coming in big, steady drafts. He shifted his blank gaze from the body on the ground, and looked at Pat Malloy. The gaze remained blank for a time and the breathing stayed heavy, and then it began to slow, and something returned to his eyes. He put the brass knuckles into his left-hand jacket pocket. When he spoke his voice was quiet.

“Sure, Patrick.”

“Kevin,” Pat Malloy said, “get him into the car. I’ll be along.”

“Like that, Pat?”

“Like that,” Pat Malloy said.

Kevin shrugged and half dragged, half carried Chuckie toward the car.

“Kid’s made a mistake,” Pat Malloy said. “Figured you for old and slow.”

Gus shrugged.

“Good for him, maybe, to learn something,” Pat Malloy said.

Gus’s breathing had slowed.

“You lemme think on this situation a little,” Pat Malloy said. “I don’t want it to get down to where it’s you or me, you unnerstand, Gus.”

“My kid’s gonna come out of this looking good, Patrick. How we do that don’t matter none to me.”

“I got family too, Gus. But I figure you owe me a lot of years on the cushion, you know?”

“I owe you shit, Patrick. You got what you paid for.”

Pat Malloy shrugged.

“Don’t be crazy, Gus. I know how crazy you are.” He jerked his head toward the car. “Now Chuckie knows too. Gimme a little time on this.”

Gus nodded slowly.

“I’m a little crazy too,” Pat Malloy said.

“I know that, Patrick,” Gus said. “Why I thought we should have this nice talk.”

“You gonna talk with Butchie too?”

Gus didn’t say anything.

“Sure you are,” Pat Malloy said. “Just don’t be crazier than you got to be.”

“Sure, Patrick.”

“And, Gus,” Pat Malloy said. “Above all, do not fuck with me.”

He turned and walked heavily toward the car. Gus stood, feeling the wind off the Mystic River, and watched him until he was in the car and the car had driven away.

T
he meeting was in Flaherty’s office at City Hall. Gus was there, and Chris, and the Suffolk County DA whose name was Kendall Robinson, and the police commissioner, Michael Sullivan, who had been a street cop with Gus nearly forty years before. Robinson had brought his chief prosecutor, a good-looking dark-haired woman named Fiora Gardello, who was rumored to have a butterfly tattooed on her butt. Mary Alice Burke sat near Flaherty’s desk, and a blank-faced gray-haired woman in a dark dress sat just out of circle with a steno pad and a Bic pen.

Flaherty’s suit jacket was hung over the back of his chair. He sat behind his desk with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled halfway up his forearms, his tie loose and his collar unbuttoned. The morning sun, slanting in past the Custom House Tower, made bright rhomboids on the floor beyond his desk.

“First of all, Chris,” Flaherty said, “welcome aboard.”

Chris nodded.

“Everyone in this room knows and admires your work, and every one of us is looking for great things from you.”

Chris smiled and nodded again.

“I believe you’ve met everyone. I’m sure you’ll be able to work with the homicide commander, here,” Flaherty said, and grinned his wide grin.

“Unless he keeps calling me Sonny,” Chris said.

Everyone laughed.
He seems comfortable
, Gus thought.

“Mary Alice will take care of you for staff, office, car and a driver, pens and pencils, anything that requires a little horse sense,” Flaherty said.

Chris grinned at her. Gus felt very still inside.

“We should talk after this meeting,” Mary Alice said.

Chris nodded. “I can use any horse sense I can get.”

“Our purpose today is to bring you up to speed, and, hopefully, to establish the working interactives. Gus, you want to give Chris, and the rest of us, an overview of these gang killings and where the investigation stands?”

“That won’t take long,” Gus said.

Chris grinned at him.

“Here’s what we know,” Gus said, “and what we can bring to court. We know that the shootings are a vendetta between the Malloys and the O’Briens in Charlestown. Everybody know who they are?”

Gus looked around. Everyone nodded.

“It started when on April third, somebody, probably several somebodies, from Malloy’s crew beat hell out of Corky O’Brien, and shot him with a .22 caliber gun behind the right ear, resulting in his death. Eight days later somebody from the O’Brien outfit did the same to Jackie Malloy. Same beating, same caliber bullet behind the ear. Dumped him in the same boatyard between-East Boston and Chelsea.”

“Not the same gun,” Fiora Gardello said.

“No.”

“No further identification on the guns involved?”

“No. There were no shell casings around, but that
doesn’t mean anything. Both of them were probably shot somewhere else, and dumped.”

Fiora Gardello nodded as if she’d learned something important.

“Then on Patriot’s Day, Allie Flynn, who is Butchie O’Brien’s nephew, got shot to death over in front of
Old Ironsides
, and a Girl Scout from Abington got wounded.”

Chris sat quietly listening. Gus had told him all this already.

“Same gun?” Fiora said.

Gus shook his head.

“Shotgun, twelve gauge. Girl Scout got hit with some stray pellets.”

“No luck tracing any of the guns?” Fiora Gardello said.

Gus looked at her silently for a moment. Then he shook his head without comment.

“Witnesses?” she said.

“None.”

“So how do you know that the O’Briens and the Malloys are shooting each other?”

Again Gus paused before he answered. Flaherty was leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. Sullivan, the police commissioner, shifted in his chair. Robinson, the district attorney, gazed out the window toward Faneuil Hall. Chris kept his eyes calmly on Gus.

“Informed sources,” Gus said.

“And we can’t force them to testify?”

Gus knew that Fiora knew better. She was grandstanding for the mayor and the new special investigator, and mostly, probably, for herself. Fiora was a pretty good prosecutor, but she was regularly proving
that she wasn’t afraid of men, and she took herself very seriously.
Nice line to her thigh, though
, Gus thought.

“No, we can’t,” Gus said.

“And even if we could,” Chris said, “my understanding is that what they could tell us does not constitute evidence, being rather more in the form of knowledgeable speculation.”

“Then perhaps Captain Sheridan should present it that way instead of as fact.”

“There’s truth and there’s fact,” Chris said. “And Captain Sheridan is presenting the truth. We’re simply short of facts at the moment.”

Fiora Gardello looked a little startled, but she nodded and stopped talking.

Gus felt excited.
Jesus Christ
, he thought.
He’s pretty good. I always see him with his mother
.

“We don’t know the button men,” Gus said. “But we know”—he smiled at Fiora—“though we can’t take it to court, that whoever did the shooting was doing what he’d been told to do by Butchie O’Brien, on the one hand, and Pat Malloy on the other.”

“And there’ll be more,” Flaherty said.

“You can count on that,” Gus said.

“Who’s on it, Gus?” Sullivan said.

“I’m on it,” Gus said. “But day-to-day it’s Johnny Cassidy.”

“I should talk with him,” Chris said.

“I’d like to assign him to you,” Gus said, “if there’s no objection. And Billy Callahan for your driver.”

“Cassidy’s a good man,” Sullivan said.

Chris nodded. “I’ll talk with you and Mary Alice after the meeting,” he said.

“Informants?” Fiora Gardello said. “Can we turn someone?”

Again Fiora was talking just to talk. Again Gus was silent for a while, looking at her.

“Tell you what, Fiora,” Gus said finally. “You pin a badge on the outside of your jacket, and go over to City Square this afternoon, and ask anybody you run into what time it is, and see if they tell you.”

Fiora raised her eyebrows.

“How about surveillance?” Flaherty said.

“What do you think, Chris?” Gus said. “Maybe four-man details, three shifts, round the clock, oh, say, fifty guys total—Malloy and O’Brien? What’s that?”

“About six hundred men,” Chris said.

“Michael?” Gus said.

The police commissioner smiled and shook his head.

“A little hard to staff,” he said. “’Less the city wants to give us a budget for it.”

Flaherty still sat with his hands behind his head. One foot propped on the edge of the desk. The shoe gleamed with fresh polish. He grinned.

“Just a thought,” he said. “How about electronic?”