Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition) (13 page)

“I start thinking,” Frankie said. “ ‘John's right about the other thing, I'm right down here, maybe he's right about this.' So I went over and I looked it over. Of course this wasn't, I think it was Tuesday or something and there wasn't anybody standing around watching
everybody, you know? So that'd be different. But, I still don't think it makes much difference, John. I still don't think you can touch that thing.”

“You're probably right,” Amato said. “That's another habit I got. See, at least I know it. When I can't think of anything I start thinking about that or the Brink's again. I'd like to do that one, you know? It's the kind of thing, it's almost like a sitting duck, except it isn't. Both of them are. Plus which, there's a lot of dough in both of them. And I can always use some of that.”

“You haven't been doing good again?” Frankie said.

“Frank,” Amato said, “I been getting
murdered
, is what I been doing. I dunno what the fuck it is. I'm not stupid. It seems like, the last good year I had was, you know when that was? I was thinking about it. It was nineteen sixty-two, can you imagine that? I got nothing in sixty-three, nothing. I think I was lucky if I even broke even. And I was getting my
balls
cut off when we did that thing. That's why I went for it, for Christ sake. That's what started making me think about it in the first place.”

“That's one of the things I was thinking about,” Frankie said, “another one of those.”

“Jesus, Frank,” Amato said, “I don't know. Those guys, knocked over the South Shore the other day? Buncha fuckers, I dunno who they were. I had about six cops walking up and down out front here, waiting around, see if anybody's gonna come around and see me. They're gonna be thinking about us now, anything like that happens.”

“Let 'em think,” Frankie said. “I was thinking, the thing that went ragtime the last time, it was Mattie.”

“Right,” Amato said.

“We had somebody instead of Mattie, that didn't
shit a fuckin' brick when somebody asks him his name or something,” Frankie said, “we wouldn't've had no problem at all.”

“That's right,” Amato said. “Shit, the first time, there, even the Doctor was all right. He must've had the fuckin' rag on or something.”

“All right,” Frankie said. “And another thing was, we had, I think we probably had too many guys. That's another thing I was thinking about. I think, two guys working oughta be enough. One that's gonna set everything up and then the two guys that never went
near
the place, to actually do it, and then, you keep it down to that many guys, you oughta be able, kind of control the kind of guys you get, you know?”

“We couldn't do it around here,” Amato said.

“I wasn't thinking of around here,” Frankie said. “What I was thinking, how about down around Taunton some place? How about that?”

“Too hard,” Amato said. “I couldn't get down there that often. For Christ sake, I take half a day off or something, go over the Registry and take care a lot of fuckin' horseshit oughta take about ten minutes, I got to talk to a lot of fuckin' stooges that haven't got no manners, it takes me half a day? You know something? I haven't got no real complaint. A guy gets himself elected to something or something, he's got a whole family full of morons, they can't get no work humping the garbage? Beautiful. I'd rather, they're doing something, they're doing nothing and we're all carrying the lazy fuckers onna welfare. But these people, they haven't got no
manners
. I can tell you what they are, you know what they are? They're, they don't give a shit. You can stand there and stand there and stand there, of course you haven't got nothing else to do, and then, they're all sitting around, these young cunts with big tits and
everything, and it gets to be four-thirty, they just sit down. They go talk to their boyfriends, about how they're gonna do it inna fuckin' bathtub or something that night, and then it's five o'clock and they hang up, he's running the fuckin' water or something, and they tell you, come back tomorrow. Fuck you, in other words.

“I got the same problem here,” Amato said. “Nobody's doing a fuckin' thing. I go down the Registry, I stand around all the time there, I waste the whole fuckin' day, I come back here, you think anybody's doing anything? Wrong. They're all fuckin' around. Talking, bullshittin' and everything. Connie, I give Connie credit. She did the best she could with this thing. I admit it. I come back and it's still running, which I didn't expect. But it's just all right. The kids she got in here, they'll work if you watch them like hawks. But you just let them find out you're not gonna be around for a day or so and watch them goof off. It's something awful.

“Last month?” Amato said. “Last month the bills're almost a week late going out. The checks're two and a half, at least. I had guys calling me up. ‘Uh, Mister Amato, about your order?' And then he tells me, three new transmissions he put in, couple tune-ups, I also owe for three tires they hadda have fixed, one of my great customers don't know they got curbs on roads, and the guy's into me for around eight hundred bucks and he wouldn't mind seeing his money.

“So I go out there,” Amato said, “the kid's sitting there. She's putting on nail polish, for Christ sake, she's talking to her boyfriend onna phone. I wait. I only pay her, for Christ sake. No reason she oughta stop talking about how they're gonna do it after closing, it's not closing yet and I'm still paying her. No, of course not. She finally gets off. I tell her, Jesus Christ, we can't do
business like this. We need a wrecker or something, this guy, he's not gonna send one. ‘
Mister
Amato,' she says, ‘I haven't had
time
. I've been so
busy
.' Jesus. I pay that broad one thirty-five for that.”

“That the one with the nice ass?” Frankie said.

“That's the one,” Amato said. “Before I get through that silly little bitch's gonna have me in court, and I'm gonna look awful stupid, I'm telling the judge, I got the money, I just couldn't get the girl to hang up long enough to send it out.”

“How is she?” Frankie said.

Amato did not reply immediately. Then he said: “Well, okay, yeah. But Jesus Christ, I mean, you still gotta get the work done and everything.”

“You don't learn nothing,” Frankie said. He was grinning. “I bet when you were a little kid it took them about eight years to get you to stop shitting in your pants.”

“I know it,” Amato said. “But, I still can't be going down to Taunton or some place every day. I got to keep this thing going even if I can't do anything else, you know?”

“Every day,” Frankie said, “that'd be if you're going in when it's open.”

“You wanna go in through the roof or something?” Amato said.

“Yeah,” Frankie said. “One of them Sunday night jobs. The back wall or something like that. Two guys that knew where everything was, and I figure, somebody went down there once and just made a little map, that'd be enough to go in on. You know what you're gonna have to do when you get in there. All you got to know is where it is.”

“You'd have to get a guy, knew bells and stuff,” Amato said. “Doglover know anything about bells?”

“I wasn't thinking about Russell,” Frankie said. “If I was gonna go in when it's open again, I'd get Russell. But anyway, Russell took off. Him and the guy he's stealing the dogs with. I dunno if he's gonna be back and if he was, he probably wouldn't want to do it. He's gonna deal.”

“What's he got?” Amato said.

“I didn't really ask him,” Frankie said. “Coke, I think.”

“He's gonna make a million bucks off of that,” Amato said.

“He might,” Frankie said, “and he might just get himself grabbed about six minutes after he starts and then
do
twenty more. That stuff's dangerous. There isn't anything around, you know? Everybody's hunting around and half of them're narcs. I heard a couple guys, they got sixty thousand hits of meth off a terminal down in Pawtucket, and they come back up, these're tough guys, and about ten freaks ripped them off. The cops've got bigger hard-ons for that'n they got for fuckin' coons with fuckin' guns, for Christ sake. Russell's got balls, but he didn't ask me and I don't think this guy he's working the dogs with, I don't think he's in it with him. I don't think anybody's in it with him, which is no way to be if you're gonna do something like that. No, I was thinking, Dean, my brother-in-law. When he was in the service he was Electronics SP, and he still fools around with that stuff all the time.”

“Alarms?” Amato said. “I thought the guy works in a gas station.”

“He does,” Frankie said. “No, but he built one of them quadraphonic things from a kit on the table in the kitchen, and he was telling me, well, when he saw my car? ‘Now if I was to get that, if I ever got myself a few extra bucks,' he tells me, he'd build his own color
television. It's all the same thing, isn't it? I mean, it's just circuits and stuff, and he knows about that.”

“You think he'd go for it?” Amato said.

“I won't know till I ask him,” Frankie said. “See, I wanted, talk to you, first, see what you thought about it. I can't lay the place out like you can. I'm all right going in, but I got to have the map in front of me. I don't notice things like you do. So, I wanted, talk to you, first. Before I see him. I think he will, though, yeah.”

“He ever do anything before?” Amato said.

“I think he did favors for a couple guys that bought cars,” Frankie said. “And he told me, mine needs a tune-up or something, he'll do it for me and the parts aren't gonna cost me anything. He's hurtin' for dough.”

“Has it got to be Taunton?” Amato said.

“Shit, no,” Frankie said. “I just said that, account of the way everybody's so interested in what we do around here. I haven't got no particular one in mind. What I want, I want the easiest one around to get into, probably one of those new ones that they made outa plastic or something, and that's got some money in it, and maybe some other things around it so you're not bare-ass to the world when you're doing it.”

“I took Connie the movies the other night,” Amato said. “Some fuckin' thing, and it's over in Brockton there, in this shopping plaza they got. It's, I dunno what the name of it is. One story.”

“How about,” Frankie said, “take a look at it, and I'll go drive past it too, and then if it looks good we can start thinking about it.”

“Yeah,” Amato said. “Yeah, I'm beginning to like this, you know? It's funny about a thing, like that last thing, there, you can tell right off, if it feels right.”

“H
E'S AN ASSHOLE
,” Cogan said. He sat in the silver Toronado. It was parked in the MBTA lot behind Cronin's in Cambridge. “The
way
he's an asshole, he's a gambler. He thinks he's a gambler, at least. What he really is is a jerk. He don't gamble, he
bets
on everything. Jerk of the year.”

“I enjoy going to the track now and then myself,” the driver said. “I haven't missed an opening at Lincoln in years.”

“So do I,” Cogan said. “I still do. Even though, every time I go down the track, I lose.”

“I don't,” the driver said. “Of course I don't bet very much, but I've won three or four hundred dollars in an afternoon, and I very seldom lose more than twenty or thirty dollars. And I have a good time.”

“It is a good time,” Cogan said. “It doesn't pay as good as writing the stuff down, but it's fun. I go, it's because there's other guys that're going. It's a nice thing to do, get some fresh air and see some people and maybe you even win. You lose? So what.

“Squirrel,” Cogan said, “Squirrel don't do that. He never goes down the track, he never goes to any of the games or anything, he just bets on things. And he doesn't bet because he heard about something and he's interested in that and he thinks he's got something. He bets because he's gotta be down on something all the time, it's like he's not gonna be able to live if he's not. He thinks he's gonna win, when he bets, he's always gonna win.”

“Some people do win,” the driver said.

“I know people that win,” Cogan said. “Some of them, get a little something in the horse and they win. Some other guys get something into all the other horses, and they win. And some guys, spent their whole lives doping horses, one or two of them, maybe there's three, I dunno, they win. Except when the other guys're getting to the animals and winning. Then they lose. And they take it in stride. Write it off. Not Squirrel. He loses today, he spent the whole morning onna phone, he's gonna be back onna phone tomorrow, and he's gonna lose again. So pretty soon he's got to go out and get some dough some place, and then something like this happens. You know Mitch?”