At End of Day (12 page)

“Which was long
after
I took what Abe said, and went and talked to Bob. And then took what Bob said and called Charlie in New York. He checked and got back to me and said ‘Yeah, the clothes’re gone,’ and ‘This’s where they were when they last saw them, when they disappeared.’ Who it was that last saw them, and where they were headed next. And who’d known when
they’re coming in, and so on and so on and so on, far into the night. Which meant I had to talk to Dave, and with what he had to say, I had enough to go to Eddie.

“Because we’re
experienced
, and
know
, ’thout even havin’ to
think
about it—you
never, ever
ask a guy with any weight for anything important until you already
know
, all right? Until you’re absolutely fuckin’
sure
that
he
knows what you’re after. And he also knows you know, and it’s important enough to you so if he doesn’t give it to you, you’ll get it from someone else and then maybe jam him up.

“All of this’s clear to him—he’s also been around. If he doesn’t give you what you know it is he’s got, then it’s no more Mister Nice Guy. He’s dead meat with you thereafter and you will break his balls for him the next chance that you get, and
every
chance you get, as long as you two’re alive. So Eddie ain’t no rookie neither, and he did have what I wanted, just exactly like you figured, and he gave it up to me.

“So
finally
, get through going around and talking to about six other guys, finding out what they could tell you,
then
you had enough to say, ‘All right, okay, it’s time to see our top-echelon informants.’ And tell McKeach and Nick the Frogman what you needed them to get, so that you could then write up the case report for Stoat, and after him the Special Agent in Charge and Assistant U.S. Attorney Marsh, Seat of Government and Department of Justice. And if all of them liked what you had as much as you did—as you knew they
would
, ’cause it was
prime
—Marsh would get your Title Threes from the judge, electronic surveillance warrants, and those orders would get you
this
.”

Farrier spread his hands, taking in the room again, the other agents stretching and rising from their chairs, the tape decks and the video-editing machines, the stacks of audiotape boxes, the
rows of videotape boxes, the computers and the pads. He smiled. “Although he doesn’t know it yet, Carlo Rizzo by the balls.
Carlo
authorized that hijacking. Time to go for him.

“Until that day finally comes, all that Stoat sees is that you’ve been
boring
him, day after day, week after week, building this bundle of two-oh-nines six or seven inches thick, with holes punched through them, and then binding all of them together with those vicious silver fasteners that’ll cut your fingers nastier’n any razor blade you ever saw, because the cut they leave is ragged. The same kind of package that used to come down to Washington when he was there and landed on his desk one morning, with a thud, and maybe made him kind of shudder. But he did his duty—spent that whole day reading it—efficiently, of course, never mind if he knew what it
meant
—and bumped it out again that night.

“That’s what he’s seen going across his desk here, and gradually accumulating in the secure files when he used his key at night, and then one day I—meaning me—bucked it to him with your memo saying ‘Think it’s ready,’ and he then signed off on it. When we get through all this stuff here someday, if we ever do, what was in all those two-oh-nines and what’s on all of both kinds of these tapes—all of it’ll get presented to the grand jury, and AUSA Marsh’ll get his okays from all the people that he needs and draw up the indictments. And the USA’ll check off again and the grand jury’ll true-bill it, like all good grand juries do, and the next thing that’ll happen’ll be that the warrants issue. We’ll go out to make arrests—papers and TV that night’ll say that what we did, we “fanned out”—and Stoat
still
won’t understand. How the hell we did it—what all went into it.

“That’s the problem with him, and it always will be. You say ‘case’ and I hear ‘process.’ Say that same word to Stoat and what he hears is ‘product.’ He thinks when we’re having dinner with
McKeach and Nick tonight, the purpose is retelling war stories, how we four’re getting Carlo. Forgetting we don’t got him yet, we’re still getting ready to.

“And the one thing that you never do with the guys like them who help you is make it seem like you believe they like what you are doing—just because they help you do it. They don’t. The reason they help you do it is because we’re doing it to somebody who’s competing with them, and therefore they don’t like them
more
than they still don’t like us.

“ ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’—that’s all it is. They help us to do it to Carlo because Carlo’s got fire power and he doesn’t fuck around, so if we will get it done and take him out it’ll be much less dangerous for them and one hell of a lot cheaper than if they do it themselves. And from their own point of view the result is just as good. We’re not friends, we’re allies, from different sides. All the difference in the world. That’s what Stoat doesn’t understand.”

“You really do not like this guy,” Hinchey said thoughtfully.

“You got that right,” Farrier said. “The asshole drives me nuts.”

“You gonna do something to him?” Hinchey said.

Farrier thought a moment. Then he said, “Maybe after we do Carlo. After that? Who knows?”

A
T
5:35
IN
THE
AFTERNOON
M
C
K
EACH
looked at his watch and decided he was tired of listening to Junius Walters’ husky high-pitched voice. “Walterboy”—or “Waterboy,” an option if the person saying it knew him well and he was in the kind of mood that made it all right to be funny—was 6’7” and to McKeach looked as though he was still pretty close to his playing weight.

“Two-forty, forty-five, still mostly muscle—must work out,” he said to Cistaro two hours later, fifteen minutes late, picking him up in his salt- and sand-streaked metallic blue ’86 Pontiac Parisienne Brougham at the Towers at Chestnut Hill. “Hadda work him over some, then go home, shower, change, like you and me’re goin’ onna double
date
with Farrier and him, the other guy, the funny name.”

“Stoat,” Cistaro said absently. “Darren Stoat.”

“Yeah,” McKeach said. “Anyway, that’s why. Hadda ask Dorothy drop my clothes inna machine, ’fore the stains set. I dunno about the jacket. Prolly drop that off the cleaners, see what they can do—if they can get blood outta suede.”

“The hell happened?” Cistaro said.

“
Ahh
, thing I hadda do this after—shape those fuckin’ niggers up. Didn’t go so good. Never does, you get involved in one of those things, explaining things to people know already, very well, you’re sayin’. Trouble is they also know as soon’s they admit it, it’ll start to cost ’em money. So quite naturally they’re gonna stall you, just as long’s they think they can.

“Still pisses me off when they do it, though, play those fuckin’ games. Especially this guy—I know he knows better but he did it anyway.” McKeach took his right hand off the steering wheel, leaned forward slightly, and patted the right side of his jacket twice. “Hadda hit him—he kinda sprayed around.”

“Well,” Cistaro said, “he wouldn’t go the cops, would he?”

McKeach snorted. He turned the Pontiac right at the light on Hammond Pond Parkway. “Shit, no,” he said. “Guy’s dumber’n I thought he’d be, but not that dumb, I think. Knows I’d clip him if he did.” He laughed. “Knows
now
anyway.”

“So, as long’s you got it done,” Cistaro said, settling back into the seat as McKeach guided the Pontiac out of the S-curve at the bottom of the hill and took the ramp to Route 9 westbound, heading for the townhouse in Framingham. “Way I look at things like that, if you find you got a problem, makin’ people understand you, how you get it done don’t matter.

“Look at me—same kinda thing. I was prolly late myself, gettin’ down to the garage. Day I had, bein’ with the guys I hadda be with? Same kinda people, same kinda routine—pretend they don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. All they’re doin’s wastin’ time—they are
gonna
fuckin’
do
it. You are gonna make ’em see that. Except I didn’t have to hit nobody—not that I would’ve minded, but after bein’ with those guys, I also hadda have a shower ’fore I feel like goin’ out.” He laughed.

“Fuckin’ Helen? I tell her where I’m goin’ and I’m goin’ there with you, and as many years’s we’ve been doin’ this she
still
does not believe me. Not one single word I’m sayin’. ‘Uh
huh
, you and
Arthur’re going to have dinner with the FBI. Well, that makes it nice—this’s my night to go bowling with the pope and Virgin Mary.’ Every time we go to see them, she thinks we’re out scoutin’ strange.”

McKeach laughed. “Last night at the office I thought all you hadda do today was go stick a broomstick all the way up Jinks’s monster ass. Not that that’s any fun. But where the hell else’d you have to go this after?”

“Ahh,” Cistaro said, slumping down in the seat, “it wasn’t just this after—nothing any different from any other damned day—one fuckin’ thing and get that done and then go see another asshole, one right after the fuckin’ other. Before lunch I hadda go and see this airy-fairy faggot on New
berry
-fuckin’ street, got the loan for ninety large off the new kid, off of Tony? Barber shop down there on Broad? That’s been a good location, ’Cept when something like this happens, customer don’t understand what he’s doin’, who he’s dealing with. Thinks he got the money from his fuckin’
mother
, something, so no hurry payin’ back. Back in February this one happened. Up until three weeks ago? Everything is fine there, absoutely ice cream. But something then apparently goes wrong for this fairy—his soufflées don’t rise no more; things begin to turn to shit. So now the guy’s three weeks
behind
. Isn’t ice cream anymore.

“So I go in, way outta my way, and, this and that, and say to him, ‘What’s goin’ on?’ You know? ‘What gives?’ Like, ‘Where’s my fuckin’
money
?’ And
he
acts like, well, I dunno, like it’s a big
surprise
or something, I might be somewhat
concerned
.
He’s
onna phone when I go in, talkin’ to some fuckin’ broad, and
he’s
the one now pissed at
me
—I’m comin’ in with no appointment—like I’m
interruptin
’ him. Just what am I
doin
’ there?

“Well, geez, I mean, what’m
I
supposed to do? He’s three weeks late. He owes us thirteen thousand bucks and change, plus the ninety underneath. I’m gonna write it off this week and
next, ’til things turn around for
him
?. Who the
fuck
are these people, anyway, we’re now doin’ business with? He thinks I won’t break his
knees
, he’s such a classy guy? He’s some kind of a good
cause
?. I wasn’t such a gentleman I might get mad at him, you know? Let him have a couple good ones.

“He explains it all to me. Very patient, you know? Like I’m maybe not too bright. Maybe I don’t
understand
—he’s usin’ our dirty old money to bankroll this very hush-hush, very high-class, artsy-craftsy operation—Cyprus, somewhere, maybe Egypt—and then it goes through Switzerland, and then after that New York.

“I’m supposd to be
impressed
. Once I understand what a high-class deal this is, I’ll be so
honored
that him being three weeks late’ll be perfectly all right. Something I laugh off.

“Right. I know what they’re
doing
—some thievin’ fuckin’ Arabs, Greeks, Iranians, maybe gypsies,
I
dunno—they are robbin’
graves
, all right? Lootin’ ancient temples. Indiana fuckin’ Jones, all so glamorous.

“I don’t buy it. Stealin’ from
dead
people—my mind this is not a thing takes balls. Diggin’ up their tombs and cemeteries, takin’ all their pots and pans, and coins. Statues of their gods, and dogs and cats and so forth, plates and jewelry and stuff their families buried with them three thousand years ago, so they’d go to the promised land.” He laughed. “Didn’t have Las Vegas then.

“But this guy with our money, up to his elbows in one sick-oh operation, and for us he’s got an
attitude
? Ninety that we loaned him was a fuckin’
contribution
? I mean, give me a fuckin’
break
.”

Cistaro laughed. “But I go easy on him. I get his attention and explain things, all right? So when I leave there I am pretty sure he now understands. He does—when I go back this afternon, he has got the dough for me and don’t give me no further shit. Think it’s gonna be okay now.

“Then I go the Terrace, lunch—hafta deal with Albie Bryson. You wanna know something? I don’t like that fuckin’ guy. Here he is, he’s comin’ to us, paying us for peace and quiet, Local Eight, all right? Because it’s cheaper for him if he pays us five grand and we give Ernie Warner two, one for him and one for Bev, and tell him never mind if some his people go the shows and see along with not too many Local Eight guys there’s a lotta scab help, too. Albie’s always
whinin
’; that’s what I don’t like. How he’s giving gigs to old-time acts, starvin’ without him, and the only thing that keeps it going is cheap towns that underwrite it. And they’re always threatenin’ him—‘Taxpayers’re complainin’, this’s prolly the last year, and …’ I get sick of it, you know? Who the fuck’s he kiddin’ here? He acts like when we make
him
pay, the fuckin’ money’s comin’ outta Little Sisters of the Poor—when you and I both know, without even
askin
’, he’s givin’ the same line of shit to the towns, and the acts, and a few guys in Local Eight. He’s
keepin
’ most of it.

“All just a load of shit. He’s beatin’ every one of us out of diddly spare change, and that’s why we let it go. That’s the
genius
of the scumbag; how he gets away with it. Same old fuckin’ story. Steal a million bucks off one guy and you’ll really piss him off—prolly hunt you down and kill you. Steal a buck off every one of a million people? None of ’em’ll even notice. We all just stand around, you know? Playin’ with ourselves. ‘Ah fah Chrissake let it go.’ It’s like what he’s doin’ is, he’s sneakin’ inna back at night and goin’ through the trash. Deposit cans and bottles.