Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition) (21 page)

“I don't get it,” Gill said.

“Neither's he, tonight,” Cogan said. “Never again, either. Come on, for Christ sake, we're gonna get home early for a change.”

The yellow 4-4-2 trailed Trattman's tan Coupe de Ville through eight consecutive green lights on Commonwealth Avenue, westbound. Cogan rode in the back,
sitting behind the driver's seat. He kept his hands down, out of sight.

“Jesus,” Gill said, “he's pretty good at this. He hits them all, just's they turn.”

“He knows the speed,” Cogan said. “They're set for nineteen or twenty miles an hour, I think it is. Something like that. He does it all the time, for Christ sake. He oughta.”

“Jack,” Gill said, “what if, what if he hasn't gotta stop?”

“We'll take him home and put him to fuckin' bed then,” Cogan said. “Just keep after him, Kenny, and remember what I told you about thinking. Don't worry about nothing. Just you change lanes now and then and everything'll be all right.”

On the long hill at the synagogue, the Cadillac swung into the right lane and the brake lights came on as it approached the intersection of Chestnut Hill Avenue. The traffic light was red. A streetcar moved west toward Lake Street beyond the intersection.

“Middle lane, Kenny,” Cogan said. “There's three lanes, it goes to three lanes up here. Take the middle.” He began to straighten up in the back seat. He leaned over and cranked down the right rear passenger window with his left hand.

The 4-4-2 approached the Cadillac quickly off the left rear.

“Right up even,” Cogan said, “nice and smooth.”

The traffic light remained red. There were no other cars. The traffic lights on Chestnut Hill Avenue turned yellow.

“Right up next to him,” Cogan said. “Then a little bit ahead. Put me right next to him, Kenny. Atta boy.”

Gill stopped the 4-4-2 with the open right rear
window even with the driver's window of the Cadillac. Trattman looked lazily at the car. He looked back at the traffic light.

Cogan ran the 30-06 Savage semi-automatic rifle out the rear window of the 4-4-2 and fired five times. The first bullet crazed Trattman's window. Trattman lurched off to the right and was snubbed up abruptly. Cogan said: “Good for you, Markie, always wear your seat belt.”

The Cadillac started to creep forward as Cogan finished firing, Trattman bent forward at an angle over the passenger seat. When Gill swung the 4-4-2 left on Chestnut Hill Avenue, the Cadillac was halfway across; it ran up against the curbstone as the lights in the apartments at the intersection started to come on.

R
USSELL, CARRYING A BROWN-PAPER BAG
, came out of the Arlington Street MBTA station just before six o'clock and turned off Arlington at St. James. At the newsstand on the corner the old man was cutting wire on bundles of the
Globe
. Two men in business suits waited in a light green Ford sedan at the newsstand, the passenger with his head and left hand out of the window, offering change. The driver watched Russell turn right on St. James. Holding the microphone in his right hand, the driver spoke into it: “All units, this is unit three. He finally made it.”

Russell crossed the street, pausing for a Greyhound bus to pull into the terminal parking lot, in from Bangor. The driver of the third Yellow Cab in line at the terminal spoke into his microphone: “Unit four to all units. I got him now. He's on the sidewalk. He's about to enter the station.”

The light green Ford started moving toward the next intersection. It turned right at Stuart Street and went the wrong way up behind the terminal.

In the station a man in a light blue private security force uniform stood at the top of the stairs, his back to the doors, watching the reflection of the entrance doors in the glass of the windows of the lounge. He wore a hearing aid button in his right ear.

Russell came through the doors, into the terminal.

The man in the light blue suit bent his neck to the left and talked out of the left side of his mouth into the small rectangular bulge in his uniform shirt. “This is unit seven. All units converge.”

The two men in business suits left the light green Ford and went to the doors of the terminal on the easterly side. The driver got out of the cab and went to the door on the westerly side. Four men got out of a blue Dodge Polara in front of the terminal. Two moved to the front of the terminal. One went to join the cab driver on the westerly side. One joined the men from the light green Ford on the easterly side. Two baggage handlers, each wearing a hearing aid button, stepped back from the baggage check-in and stood near the doors at the back of the terminal. One of the ticket sellers, in a white shirt, stepped out from behind the counter, moving slowly.

Russell paused to let the ticket seller walk in front of him. The ticket seller roused a drunk, asleep on the bench. He began to usher the drunk toward the easterly doors. After Russell had his back to them, the drunk required less assistance.

Russell went to the baggage lockers on the westerly side of the terminal.

The man in the security force uniform watched from the top of the stairs. He spoke again. “Unit seven to all units. West side, west side.”

Russell inserted the key to locker 352 and turned it.

The men from the light green Ford entered the terminal through the easterly doors.

Russell opened the locker and took out a box wrapped in brown paper. He opened the bag and put the box in. Leaving the locker door ajar, he turned toward the front of the terminal. He carried the bag in his left hand.

The driver of the cab entered through the westerly door. The two men in the baggage room went out into the passenger area of the terminal. The men from the Polara came in through the front doors and the man in
the security force uniform turned slowly away from the front doors as Russell approached them.

The men from the light green Ford walked up behind Russell, one on each side. When they were half a pace behind him, they took him firmly by the elbows. Russell's body sagged.

The man on Russell's right said: “Bureau Narcotics. You're under arrest.” He had a chrome-plated forty-five automatic in his right hand. He stuck the barrel close to Russell's face.

The man on Russell's left had handcuffs in his left hand. He stepped backward without letting go of Russell's arm and swung it behind Russell. He locked one cuff on Russell's left wrist and took the bag from him. He pulled Russell's right arm back and locked the wrist into the cuff. He patted Russell down. He shook his head.

The man with the automatic said: “You're pretty fuckin' obvious, my friend. Matter of fact, you're so fuckin' obvious I was afraid you'd forget where you left the stuff, or lose the key or something.
You've
got a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and
will
be used against you at a trial in a fuckin' court of law. You got a right to an
attorney
, and if you can't
afford
an attorney, us long-suffering good and noble taxpayers'll go out and treat you to the best fuckin' shyster we can find. I think you also got a right to have your head tested, and in your case, I think you oughta, see if there's anything in it at all.”

“I wanna make my phone call,” Russell said. The agents urged him toward the door.

“They got a real nice phone in the Marshal's office, my friend,” the agent said. “It's a great little instrument. You can call any place in the country on it. That's if you
know how to dial. If you don't know how to dial, we'll teach you how to do it. If you call long distance, we'll put it on your bill.”

“Thanks,” Russell said.

“Buddy,” the agent said, “don't thank me. I think you're gonna be surprised when you get that bill. You're goin' in for all day on this one, my friend. Unless of course your friend down there in New York figured out how stupid you really are, and sold you quinine or something. All's well that ends well, right, my friend?”

“Shut up,” Russell said.

The agents escorted Russell out of the terminal, into the darkness.

“That's not one of your rights, my friend,” the agent said. “That's one of my rights. But I got a little deal for you, all right, my friend? Any time you wanna talk, just tell me, and I'll shut up. Just say the word and you have got the fuckin' floor.”

“Fuck you,” Russell said.

The Polara made a U-turn on St. James and pulled up in front of the terminal.

The agent dug the barrel of the automatic into Russell's rib cage. “That, my friend,” he said in a soft voice, “is not the kind of talk I meant. People've been known to fall down a lot getting in and out of cars and so forth when they talk like that. Got it?” Russell said nothing. “And another thing, my friend,” the agent said. “Not only are you stupid but you stink. I think you're gonna get twenty years and a bath. I dunno which you need more.”

“T
HE STUPID SHIT
,” Frankie said. He sat in Amato's office. “You know who he picks to call, of course. Me. Only he don't remember I moved, so he calls Sandy, and he got her up and she's all pissed and she calls me and give me a whole ration of shit and then I got to call him and I hadda girl with me. And of course I got to give my name to them, they won't let anybody else talk to him.”

“That's good,” Amato said.

“Yeah,” Frankie said. “Oh, I'm gonna really enjoy this, I can tell. Wants me to come down and see him. ‘Yeah,' I said, ‘sure, Russell, and I won't have a hundred ballbusters following me around for the rest of my life if I do that, either. No thanks. I didn't have nothing to do with it and I told you what was gonna happen and you wouldn't listen to me.'

“ ‘Did you tell them?' he says to me,” Frankie said. “ ‘Are you the fuckin' bastard that told them?'

“ ‘Russell,' I said,” Frankie said, “ ‘nobody hadda tell them. You told them yourself. What am I gonna tell cops anything for? Tell me that, huh? You wanna blame somebody, blame yourself.' That calmed him down some. Well, will I make bail for him? ‘Depends,' I said. See, he hasn't got no money left. Spent it on his problem, which I don't think they're probably gonna let him go out and sell, now. ‘What's the bail?' Just what you'd expect, his record and a pound of that stuff. One hundred thousand dollars.”

“Ten K from you,” Amato said.

“Well,” Frankie said, “there's guys that'll write one
for five per cent if you wanna handle some things for them now and then, but onna guy like him I doubt you could get it even from one of them. But either way, it's too much, and besides, I tell him, ‘Keep in mind, I just got out of the can myself. Where'd I get all that bread?' No, I said I'd call somebody for him, but that's all, he can make his own deal. ‘You ask me,' I said, ‘I don't even think that's gonna do it for you, though. You raise the hundred, they'll go to double surety or two hundred or something. Those guys aren't gonna let you out. Forget it.'

“So that's what he tells me,” Frankie said, “and then he says: ‘Frankie, if I don't get out of here, I'm gonna tell them you were in it with me.' ”

“Nice guy,” Amato said.

“Ah,” Frankie said, “he was all pissed off. I don't blame him. And what the fuck's he gonna tell them? I said: ‘Russell, get off the pot, all right? You bring me into this, I'll tell them everything you told me about Goat-ass stealing that other stuff, and all the dogs and the insurance thing you had with Kenny onna car and everything. So don't hand me that shit.' He'll be all right. It's just, he's looking at a lot of time. You can't blame him. I asked a guy, he said his guess is, probably eight, ten, something like that. So naturally that means, they probably told him guys've been getting fifteen or so, maybe more.

“Them guys,” Frankie said, “I mean, they are
bad
. This kid I talked to, he said they come at you from just about every place at once. ‘They tell you,' he said, ‘you don't have to say nothing to them. But that sure don't stop them from saying something to you. They toss you in New York,' he said, ‘it's gonna take them, always, three or four hours, before you can see a judge,
and all the time they're
talking
to you. I think them guys've got cassettes in them. “You're a lost dude this time. You're gonna go in and you're never gonna come out again. You're crazy, that's all. We know you're not in it alone. You better talk about it.” ' So, he was probably pissing his pants when he called me. So I told him: ‘Russell, I tell you what: I'll get you a lawyer. That's all I can do for you.' ”