At End of Day (19 page)

“It was like
morning.
Everything was
golden
again. This was
great.
Farriers and Slatteries—all of us were patriotic—we
all
thought it was great. I could do the right thing by this lovely young woman that I’d ravished, who’d loved every blissful minute of it, and still serve my country, too? Redemption during
this
life—it was wonderful.

“Point of it is, if any young FBI couple should’ve been able to weather the stresses that come with the job, you would’ve thought it’d be us. But by the time I got to Buffalo, our marriage was in trouble. I’d already started spending more time on my career when I was still in Houston than I had on the two of us—and by then our
three
kids. And then once I got to Buffalo I just about disappeared.

“See, being brand new there, no one on the street knew me. I was a natural for the Strike Force, hanging out the strange joints and keeping the weird hours, up to no good with strange people. Working under cover, you lead a whole new different life. And you really have to
lead
it, act like a real hood yourself. And furthermore, you’d better make it
convincing
—wise guys get really pissed off when they catch on one of their big pals is an undercover cop.

“We were so damned
young
, compared to you and Lily. Besides growing up in University City and going to college, all that Linda’d ever done in her whole life was be Mrs. John H. Farrier and the mother of his children, married to the FBI. She
defined
herself that way, but
now
all of a sudden there she was, all by herself, East Aurora, New York. We had a nice place; it’s a nice enough town, and she did have the kids—but
I
wasn’t there.

“I
couldn’t
be, being Franny ‘Soot’ Barillo thirty miles away, just blew into Buffalo from LA with a whole load of connections in the movie business. Soot called it ‘the industry’—you could
tell
he’d been around. I could do that shit then, be Soot Barillo—I’d been Soot in high school, I was playing ball, lots of black hair I still had, and so when somebody said ‘Soot’ I quite naturally looked around.

“Anyway, the upshot was I discovered I had a positive knack for it. I
loved
being someone else, especially a gangster. Gangsters live large; act like they don’t give a shit, even though there’s always some cop watching them.
I
didn’t have even
that
concern.

“So I was having a great time for myself, but with me out of character like that, Linda didn’t know who she was anymore. Didn’t know how to behave around
me
anymore, what little time we did get to spend with each other. And I had my share of trouble remembering how to act when I was with her. Made me kind of sympathize with actors, what they must have to go through, becoming different people every time they go to work.” He leaned forward, picked up his glass, and drained it. He refilled it from the second bottle.

Stoat drank thoughtfully.

“Made me very self-conscious,” Farrier said. “I couldn’t let go of it, just be with my wife. All the time I was calculating, same way I did on the job—‘Now, how does Soot Barillo act if he’s suddenly around this nice, white, boring lady, who bleaches her own hair at home, wears shorts from Sears disguised as skirts? This nice young mom who takes such good care of her three kids while her boring workaholic husband’s far away?’

“It was like I was
seducing
her, when I slept with her. Doing two mean things at once. Fucking around with this nice housewife while her nice straight guy was out of town, and at the same time cheating on my
girlfriend
—which I had, by the way, after three weeks in the part. Told myself I had to—Soot was just that kind of guy.

“Of course I had a wife somewhere. Everybody’s got one. Soot’s wife’s name was Irene. We got married way back in our early twenties, hardly remember it now. She’s a good broad, cosmetologist, works in television, does make-up at CBS. We live in West Hollywood, nice little two-bedroom stucco, jacaranda the front yard and a whole damn bunch of jasmine, two blocks up
from Beverly, one in from Sequoia. But Soot didn’t see her much, you know? ‘Always onna road these days.’

“Okay, you talk the talk and walk the walk, you better live the life. Soot in any town he went to, gonna be there a while, he would get himself a girlfriend, okay? Nothing
serious
, but hey, you know how it is, the guy’s in
Buffalo
, for Chrissake—everyone knows how cold it gets there inna winter. It’s even cold there inna
summer.
Besides, Denise’s nineteen,
fresh
, with a
very
nice chest, ass; this chick is a
cookie.
And of course a pushover for a guy who’s with the
movies. She
is Sootie’s
type
, all right? It all fits together nice—if I corrupt union guys for the FBI, must be okay if I fuck Denise for my country as well. Part of the schtick.

“So now, this Linda chick—like what gives with this, all right? What’s he doin’ with this older broad? Soot’s type she’s not at all.” He drank again and set the glass down on the table.

“When I was in the clubs and bars, the back rooms, all right? Everything’s fine. When I did get home, long weekend I’m supposedly back in LA, ‘taking care of a few things,’ but I’m actually in East Aurora,
nothing
was right. Linda and the kids were just not Soot’s type of shit at all—and neither was Soot theirs. I could’ve told them that, they asked me—Soot wasn’t a bad guy at all; he was fun to be around—but he was not a family man.

“So after a while, lookin’ back at it now, your basic unbiased observer, the fact that Jack’s job meant that Jack and Linda couldn’t spend
much
time together—that wasn’t the real problem anymore. The problem was that they had
any
time with each other anymore. It was such hard fuckin’
work.

“For the life of them both she could not seem to get it through her head that the rule was I was not supposed to tell her or anybody what I did when I was gone, where I went and who was with me. She was always after me. And when I did give in to
her, allow myself to open up with her and
tell
her a little bit, not mentioning Denise, of course—it didn’t make her happy. All I could do was hope to Christ I didn’t talk in my sleep. Or
do
something, I’m screwing Linda, old times’ sake—not that I ever minded screwing, and besides, she did
expect
it—that I’d learned in bed with Denise.

“Well, it sounded to her like I was getting so I actually
liked
these cheap hoods, and thugs, and gangsters—which I did; they’re
funny
bastards, not always on purpose—and was getting more and more
like
them, the more time I spent with them. She could not understand that this was what I was
supposed
to be doing, putting my whole heart and soul into it. Not being her darling faithful husband, which of course I could assume she knew I still was, and always would be, but as a loyal, hard-working and
talented
special agent of the FBI.

“So that pretty much did it. We ended up getting divorced. We took the no-fault route, but she could’ve named either the Mob or the bureau co-respondent.

“Now
your
wife,” Farrier said. “What she’s got going for her, Lily—though of course she doesn’t know this, and there’s no way you can tell her, least that
I
would recommend—is that even with the Frogman and McKeach in your own house and eating dinner, you are nowhere
near
as exposed, nowhere
near
as closely tied up to the mob as I was, my days and nights, ’round the clock in Buffalo, being Soot Barillo. And therefore you’re nowhere near as close to even
risking
being compromised—much less
killed
, as I would’ve been they found me out—as I was then. And I came through it, no stain on me—being Soot, in the life.”

Stoat nodded, looking gloomy.

“Now, you said Frogman,” Farrier said. “Frogman especially bothers you, having him here in your house. You and Lily too?”

Stoat nodded, and drank some beer.

“Aw right,” Farrier said. He drank some beer. He set the glass down and folded his hands. He nodded and belched silently. “This’s the story, the Frogman. Why no matter what you do, you can’t find out much about him. Now don’t leave the room, go to the bathroom, sneak out for a smoke, if you still do that—this’s a very short story. Which shows you how smart the guy is.

“Nick Cistaro’s father was a stonecutter. He worked for all the cemetery-marker guys, the harps who made the gravestones out of good old Quincy granite. There used to be a flock of them around here, like one on every corner, but that was when I guess the only way they had to cart the stones around to the graveyards in various places was by horses pulling wagons. And they couldn’t go that far. So the companies that made the markers hadda be near the railroads, to bring the new stone in, and then not too far from the graveyards, where the finished markers went. Nowadays they got the trucks, big heavy trucks and cranes for lifting them on and off with, so distance isn’t a problem. But people still die—still hafta get buried, so there’s still a lotta monument companies around. Just not as many.

“When Nick was a boy, the Corrigans and Carrigans, Mulligans and Moriartys, they all called Guillermo Cistaro when they had a new name needed cutting, and he’d write them in his book with a little stubby pencil, and every week he’d make his rounds.

“This week he went to the places where they sold the new headstones, putting on the names of people were the first deaths in their families since they came into this country. Then the next week and week after, he’d go to the cemeteries, cutting new names into old stones, an’ the dates that went with them, under the old names that he probably’d cut into the stone years ago, when the stone was new.

“Now, you ask yourself, how can such a nice, hard-working, steady man have for a son a man like Nick, a gangster through and through? I have the answer for you. Guillermo never made much money. Nick wanted to make money. Lots and lots of money.

“He told me that himself, one night. We’re in the Friendly Ice Cream there, Washington Street in Brighton, it’s about seven-thirty and we met there for a sandwich. This isn’t that long after Fogarty retired. But we’ve known each other, Nick and I, a good year or two by then, so it’s not one of those jerk-off sessions when you spend most of your time sparring with each other, you know? Wasting everybody’s time. I’m the third FBI guy he’s had now for a contact, and we’re all pretty much the same—I am not that different. And after Buffalo and then workin’ with Fogarty here, it’s not like I still think a wise guy’s got hooves and a long tail, keeps a pitchfork in his car. We’ve both now long since reached the point where we can both relax and have a cheeseburger without shittin’ our pants.

“And he said something, not important, I forget now what it was, exactly, but the gist of it was that he’d passed this cemetery that day, two of them actually, both sides of the road.

“ ‘There I was,’ he says to me, ‘I’m just comin’ in from bein’ down on Route One in Norwood there, all mornin’, where I hadda see a guy, comin’ back LaGrange Street, West Roxbury, all right? Two cemeteries—Saint Joseph on the left and Mount Benedict on the right.

“ ‘I start thinkin’—all the days, and there was a lot of them, winter, summer, didn’t matter, that my father spent out here, kneelin’ onna buncha rags, sittin’ on his wooden toolbox. Rain comin’ down on him, year round, snow fallin’ on him inna winter, wearin’ gloves with no fingers in ’em so that he can hold the chisel—this was how he made his living.

“ ‘Well, I take care of my family. I take care of Assunta. I take care of our Regina. I take care her little sister, Angela, with the bright eyes, and I take care of her brother, Giacomo, and his little brother, Nicolo, him with the sad eyes, my father always said I was too serious, boy should have some fun, but Nicolo, with the sad eyes, and we have a happy life.

“ ‘Never heard the man complain. “Did he ever have a day like I am having now?” I think? “Where everybody’s after him, he can’t get nothin’ done?” No, I doubt it very much.’

“ ‘Well, sure,’ I say to him,” Farrier said. “ ‘Probably he didn’t. But you got a complicated life, and unless I am mistaken, you went and you made it for yourself. Did he drive out to those graveyards in a big black BMW sedan, climate control for heat on cold days, cool on hot days, for what’d cost an honest citizen ninety thousand dollars? Did he have to juggle time he spent with a stylish girlfriend and the time he spent with Assunta, so neither one of them felt neglected? And balance the money he spent on the two of them, neither one had her feelin’s hurt?’

“ ‘Well, no, he didn’t,’ Cistaro says to me, ‘but that’s the whole point of it, see? Why
I
did it. Why I can do those things. As hard’s my father worked, every fuckin’ day his life—get up inna morning, have some breakfast, coffee, always coffee, lots of coffee; make himself some sandwiches, big black Thermos full, more coffee; go to work with his toolbox, on the trolley, least when I was a kid; got his first Ford pick-up third or fourth hand, naturally. He was so proud. I remember that—I was eight. So then after that he drove, least made it a little better—though the truck cost money, too, it was always breakin’ down. Come home at night, exhausted, beat to shit; have some dinner, go to bed, rest up for another day—he never got nowhere.

“ ‘Watched him do it, day after day, I was growing up. Never makin’ any progress, never gettin’ anywhere, and I thought, “I dunno what I’m going to do, don’t know where I’m going to do
it, but one thing I do know, I grow up, I’m gonna make a lot of money.”

“ ‘And everything I did since I was twelve years old or so, I did to keep that promise to myself. May’ve changed my mind a lot of things, seen some people come and go, but the one thing stayed the same, and is never gonna change—no matter what I do, I will make a lot of money. Always have more than I need, and then even more behind that.