Killers (27 page)

He loves to do this to me. He's inside and I'm out. The one time I got in a real jackpot, I was nolle prossed, and yet he's the smart guy, Mr. Three-time Loser.

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “This was about three weeks ago. First they run him through the wringer up here, they drag him out of population and make him sit there in some closet for three hours, you know what I mean? I've told you how it works.”

What the feds do is, if you're not cooperating, they throw you in a holding pen for hours at a time. Then they bring you in and you say, I'm not saying nothing until I see my attorney, and they say okay and drive back to Boston. After which you are returned to population, and everybody's giving you the fish-eye look 'cause they think you've been ratting them all out these last three or four hours.

If you're lucky you might not get shanked that same night in the shower.

Next morning, you're calling your lawyer, and the feds are coming back, and this time you are answering their questions, you are ratting, and next thing you know, you're in WITSEC—

“Are you listening?” my brother Marty said. “Mikey fucking Tickets could talk a dog off a meat wagon, so he's okay, he explains to everybody what happened. Once the feds realize he ain't cracking, they put him on the bus.”

Diesel therapy, they call it. They drive you around the country, you and a bunch of other cons they're trying to crack. The windows are covered over, so you don't even know what time of day it is. The only thing they feed you is sandwiches with cold cuts, and I don't mean Boars Head Black Forest ham either. So you get constipated. Every night, the bus stops at a different lockup and you file off, but you can't buy anything at the commissary or make phone calls outside, because you don't have an account there.

This can go on for months, or so Marty tells me.

“Is he back yet?” I asked.

“Fuck no he ain't back. There ain't no round-trip tickets on that bus. They either crack you or you end up in some state pen in the south that's ninety percent jig. And that's when you flip. Most guys figure, who needs that? They crack quick once they get on the bus.”

“So you haven't talked to him?”

“I just told you, he's on the bus. Or was. Next time I see Mikey Tickets it'll be at Santo's.”

“What did you say?”

“He used to tend bar at Santo's before he got hired at City Hall.”

I was suddenly anxious to end the conversation. “Thank you very much, Marty. Anything else?”

“Just don't forget me,” he said. “You told Ma you'd look after me. The way I interpret that, it means you never let me get under a hundred bucks and, brother, I'm getting close.”

I told him I'd see him Saturday. Maybe.

 

25

I'D RATHER BE LUCKY THAN GOOD

Sooner or later, you get caught flat-footed. To quote somebody, there comes a night when the best get tight—and when it happened to me, I wasn't even tight. I just wasn't paying enough attention as I pulled up into a parking space a few doors up the hill from the Alibi. It was dusk, and there was nobody on Broadway—Somerville has gone from working class to non-working class. It wasn't like the old days, when people at this hour would be getting off the bus and shopping for a few groceries or a six-pack before walking home. Now it might as well as have been midnight.

Suddenly I heard the squeal of tires. That was what saved me. If they'd just driven up at a normal speed they'd have had me cold. Instead, I had time to hit the sidewalk rolling, toward a dented-up minivan with a roof rack for ladders, something that belonged to a tradesman, probably a painter.

As I rolled I could see the front plate-glass window of the Winter Hill Barber Shop explode. They were using an automatic rifle. And I was unarmed. If they knew that, my reputation might still precede me, but it sure wouldn't save me. I'd be the next guy laid out in the front parlor at Rossetti's.

But it was just dark enough, and I was just low enough to the ground. They didn't even know where I was as they next raked the front of the Alibi, but nothing gets through those steel plates. I heard the squeal of tires again, and I raised my head just enough to see the taillights of an SUV, a big one, maybe an Escalade. Stolen, undoubtedly. It was headed east, toward the McGrath/O'Brien highway. I figured I had only a few seconds before the crash car pulled up and opened fire, so I jumped up and bolted for the Alibi. As soon as the boys had heard the shots, they'd locked the front door, and I had to bang on it for a few seconds before Hobart cracked it open, 9 mm Glock in hand. I pushed him back inside, then grabbed the gun from him and relocked the door. Finally I hit the deck, just in case. Outside, they opened fire again. This was car two. They couldn't get to me now, and they knew it, which must have pissed them off, because they fired off a few more angry wasted rounds, which we could hear bouncing harmlessly off the steel plates outside. It only went on for a few seconds, but it seemed longer, much longer. Finally, it was over.

“Call the cops!” I yelled to Hobart. The few customers all started getting off the floor, dusting themselves off. Occasionally customers—civilians anyway—asked me why we'd boarded up the front window years earlier and put steel plating where the glass used to be. I always made some lame joke about being allergic to sunlight. I had a feeling no one would be asking me that question about steel plates again for a good long time.

The cops were there instantaneously, so quickly I barely had time to hand the Glock back to Hobart, who stashed it behind the bar. I knew the TV crews would be here soon too. I called Sam, the owner of the barbershop next door, and told him I'd pay for any deductibles on his insurance policy. He sighed and asked me if we had any plywood or two-by-fours at the Alibi that he could use to board up his place. He was driving in from his home in Arlington.

*   *   *

I get some respect in Somerville. God knows I should, I spread enough cash around. When they arrived, the uniforms left me alone and let the captain handle the perfunctory questions. His name was Paul Vitagliano, Paulie Vitt we called him. Two years ahead of me at Somerville High, or would have been, if I had stuck around long enough to graduate.

“What's going on with you guys lately?” he asked me casually.

“Would you believe me if I said I didn't know?” I said.

“Probably not,” he said. “I read the newspapers too, you know.”

“Well, don't believe everything you read.”

After a while the reporters and TV crews arrived. I retreated upstairs to my club—I don't feel like giving every wannabe in the city a good look at me. Rather than block the front door and look like an asshole on the eleven o'clock news, Hobart let the crews inside long enough to get a few wide shots of the bar, sans the few customers who hadn't screwed out the back door when the shooting started. After they got their videotape, Hobart told them to beat it and they all took off for headquarters in Union Square and the official statement from Captain Vitagliano.

There were still a lot of cops around and I knew eventually I'd have to go downstairs and at least make an appearance. But first I wanted to call Sally on his cell phone. I'd stood him up on our date at the Café Ravenna. I was just hoping Liz had done the same.

“Where the fuck are you?” he said, his voice slightly slurred. “You were supposed to be here three hours ago.”

“I got ambushed outside the Alibi,” I said.

“What? Are you okay?” He sounded sincerely concerned, maybe because if I were gone, Cheech would be his top gun. Hell, maybe his only gun, if he couldn't convince Salt and Peppa to come work for him.

“Yeah, I'm okay, watch the eleven o'clock news.”

“Get any of them?”

“Jesus Christ, Sally, I'm lucky to be alive. Remember when I put in those steel plates over the front windows, and you told me I was wasting my money? Those plates absorbed about a hundred rounds.”

“Whatever happened to revolvers?” Sally mused. He sounded like the old man, Tommy Callahan.

“If a guy's got a machine gun,” I said, “a thirty-eight's worth about as much as a knife at a gunfight.”

“But you're okay, right?”

“I'd rather be lucky than good, Sally.”

Now that he knew I was all right, he suddenly seemed a lot more relaxed. Maybe it was the dago red he'd been swilling all night.

“Hey,” he said, “I heard on the news tonight, somebody dusted Henry Sheldon.”

“Yeah, I heard that too. The police said they're baffled.”

“They are, are they?” he said with a chuckle. “Tell you something else I heard. I heard somebody just borrowed some big dough off him.”

“Is that right? Got any names to go with that?”

Sally started to say something, then thought better of it. I had a feeling he was going to say something about karma, only karma wasn't his kind of word. What he'd say was, “What goes around comes around.”

As if I didn't know.

 

26

LOVE ON WINTER HILL

As I drove up Winter Hill, the first thing I noticed was the police cruisers in front of the Alibi. I thought about just heading up the hill, turning left on Medford Street in Magoun Square and then heading back into the city.

But my curiosity got the best of me. I parked across Broadway and then crossed over, just as one of the police cars was pulling away from the curb in front of the little barbershop. I saw a slight, older guy standing on the sidewalk. There were shards of glass everywhere, and he was nailing up boards over what was obviously a shot-out window.

I kept walking, and opened the front door of the Alibi.

“We're closed,” somebody yelled. Then I saw Bench, sitting at the big circular table with a couple of what I took to be plainclothesmen. He saw me and nodded to the guy who'd yelled at me.

“He's okay, Hobart.” He looked back at me and pointed to the bar. “Make yourself a drink, I'll only be a couple more minutes.”

The cops didn't ask who I was. That would have been impolite. I grabbed a stool and just sat there. The bartender was apparently taking the night off, and nobody had been called to fill in. Not that I was particularly thirsty. After another ten minutes or so, the cops stood up and shook hands with Bench—I was watching everything in the mirror behind the bar. They made their way out and shut the door, and Bench locked it behind them. Then he turned to me.

“Just another night in the All-American City,” he said.

“A drive-by?” I asked.

“What else?” He pointed toward a booth in the back. “Let's sit down. You sure you don't want something to drink?”

I shook my head and sat down. “I found out who owns the Python.”

His eyes narrowed. “Anybody I know?”

“You know a guy named Blinky, right? It's some cousin or some other relative of his.”

“Be specific.”

“All I know is, the owner of record is a broad named Gargiulo, and her mother's maiden name is Marzilli.”

He just sat there, staring at me. I took the folded birth certificate out of my coat pocket and handed it to him. He read it silently, shook his head, refolded it and pushed it back across the table to me.

“Anything else?” he finally said.

“Yeah. You know a guy named Mikey Tickets?”

He shook his head. “Tell me about him.”

“He used to be one of the mayor's fixers at City Hall. He's from East Boston.”

“So?”

“So he's been in the can for a while, mail fraud, wire fraud, the usual shit, he was taking kickbacks to steer federal grants—”

Bench grimaced. “Let me guess, they've brought him back to testify before a grand jury?”

I waited for him to say something else, but he could hold his mud, as my father used to say. Bench McCarthy never said anything that might come back to haunt him in, say, a grand jury proceeding. He never volunteered any information, not to me anyway. Suddenly I heard knocking on the front door of the Alibi and a woman demanding to be let in. Hobart, now sitting at the round table with an automatic in front of him, motioned one of the younger guys sitting at the bar to open the door.

A beautiful dark-haired young woman in a micro-miniskirt rushed in, looked quickly around the bar and made for our booth.

“Bench,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “Thank God you're okay. I just heard.”

“It happened two hours ago,” he said coolly.

“I was getting my hair done,” she said. He looked over at me, then back at her. “Patty, this is—” I realized, he couldn't remember my name.

“Jack,” I said.

“Bob,” he said. “Bob Smith.”

“Pleased to meetcha, Bob,” she said, then turned back to Bench, real anguish visible on her face. “Bench, why us? Who's doing this?”

“Somebody who doesn't like me would be my best guess.” He managed a slight smile, then stood up and hugged her tightly. She had an even better figure than I'd noticed at first glance. “Listen, baby, the good news is they're not very good shots. And the better news is that this time you weren't with me.” He kissed her on her forehead. “I'd never forgive myself if something happened to you. You know I love you, baby.”

Patty's eyes grew wide. This had to be a very rare occasion, judging from her expression and Bench's reputation as a hard guy. And I was a witness.

“Bench,” she said, tenderly, “this is the first time you've ever said you love me.”

He reached over and brushed a lock of her long black hair out of her face and around her ear. “I'm not a heart-on-my-sleeve kind of guy, am I, Patty?”

Boy, was that the understatement of the year.

He reached into his coat pocket and came up with a house key, which he handed to Patty. “Hobart'll drive you to Brighton, and you wait for me there. I may not get back 'til late tonight.”