“So what happens when the kid goes to Vietnam and gets dead?” Beale said.
“Look,” Cobb said, “that’s what I’m trying to tell you. This car that you’ve got here. We know it’s hot. You sell it and you get in trouble. You’re going to sell it, and you’ll get in trouble. This is fait accompli.”
“Hey,” Beale said, “pretty good. You would’ve flunked French in college, if I hadn’t sat next to you.”
“Gwendolyn,” Cobb said, “my wife, has culture. But the U.S. Army does not. The U.S. Army operates according to the principles of government management, which are that if it is possible to screw up, do it. The Battles kid puts in to win the hearts and minds of all those folks in Vietnam? He really wants to go? They may very likely say: ‘Hey. Whoa. This kid is nuts. We’re not sending him over there.’ Or they may lose his papers. Or they may not lose his papers, but a guy that meant to stamp ’em ‘Go’ will stamp ’em ‘Stop,’ because he has to go to the bathroom, and besides then it’s time for coffee. The kid doesn’t go? I get the credit. The kid goes? I never said I could stop it.”
“But Battles thinks you did,” Beale said.
“Battles wants to think I did,” Cobb said. “I can’t help what Battles wants. I can help what you want, I hope, which is to sell this stolen car and get in trouble as a result. Will you listen to me, please?”
“How’d you get to know this guy again?” Beale said.
Cobb sighed. “I told you. I won’t tell you.”
“Henry Briggs,” Beale said.
“What about him?” Cobb said.
“He’s the guy that called you,” Beale said. “Middle of the night. Has to be Henry Briggs. There’s only about four guys you know who would think of your name when they got into some mess in a cheap motel somewhere else. And two of them you probably wouldn’t help. You would help me, and you might help Paul Whipple, and maybe there’s two or three more. But it has to be someone you knew a long time, which is Henry, and someone who traveled a lot, which is also him, and someone with a habit of getting into the kind of trouble that guys find in cheap motels. And that is also Henry. What’d he do? Screw an underage girl? Ball club would’ve liked that a lot, one of their players gets himself arrested for statutory rape.”
Cobb said nothing.
“Jesus, Ed,” Beale said, “you met the guy, ’d you adopt him? Is that what it is? I realize you grew up with the guy and all that, but how far back can the guy make you go? And when you get there, how the hell’s he gonna pay you back?”
“Ah,” Cobb said, “that forest warden job there, that was nothing. I’d put a word in on that job, for anyone I knew. And Henry really knows that stuff, the trees and the hairy woodland creatures. Besides, that was a very popular appointment. Everybody knows him, everybody likes him, and everyone that doesn’t like him lies and says they do. I actually made friends with that. Henry’s still a young man, you know, Don. Those ball players finish up early. They need something to do with their life.”
“Yeah,” Beale said, “they probably do, and you probably did. Make some friends for yourself for a change. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is: Henry’s your man. Your guy to run against Wainright.”
Cobb chuckled. “Shit,” he said, “Henry wasn’t even registered to vote, till I went and got him his job. ‘Well, hell, Ed, sure I’ll do it. It’s something you want me to do. But why the hell do I have to? The animals won’t care.’ The animals in the woods maybe won’t,’ I tell him, ‘but the animals where I work will, if I give out a soft job to a friend of mine, and he turns out another Republican.’ ”
“Ed, Ed,” Beale said, “what’re you telling me? That I should ‘think creative’? That stuff you were saying about Earl there, remember that? What it was he did? Well, I doubt you’re right, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Maybe five out of a hundred remember the rigged games, and that some of the players went to jail, but only a real college basketball nut, one in a thousand, maybe, remembers the names of the players. And there’s none of those guys around here. Dad went bullshit when Earl got arrested. Said it’d ruin the business, he’d be closing down in a year. You know how many people ever even mentioned it? Two. One was the basketball coach at the university, and he said he was sorry, and he bought a new car from us. The other one was Russ Stanley at the paper. Called Dad up and said he thought it was Saint Stephen’s fault for bringing these green kids down from the country and not warning them about gangsters. Nobody up here follows that sport. Nobody knows who plays it. The Celtics, maybe. Some follow them. But otherwise our sport is baseball. Well, baseball and winter, of course.
“Now,” he said, “the only guy I know of that ever came from here and made a big name for himself by playing baseball, well, that was Henry Briggs. Christ, the bars around this town, the veterans’ organizations and the church groups—all that stuff? When he was with the Red Sox, and the Red Sox were in town, every single weekend I bet you could’ve had your choice of ten or fifteen buses, you’d’ve asked around statewide. I’d go so far as to say I bet Bob Wainwright’s not the best-known man in his district. I bet Henry Briggs is that. And not everyone who knows Bob is a fan of his. He used to be a banker, remember, and bankers make people unhappy. He’s been in Washington a long time now, and he’s made some enemies, I’m sure, people who needed favors here.”
Cobb did not say anything.
“This thing you got Henry out of,” Beale said. “Is it the kind of thing, you know, that if it got out it’d kill him?”
Cobb shrugged. “A youthful indiscretion,” he said.
“Meaning yes,” Beale said. “Next question. How many people know about it?”
“Not many,” Cobb said. “They don’t because he got out. If he didn’t get out, a lot would’ve. Everybody, in fact. From sea to shining sea. But he did get out, so there’s only, well, three, maybe five of us at the outside.”
“Any of them include the guy in Washington?” Beale said. “Or the guy that knew Battles down there?”
“Nope,” Cobb said. “All I told them was what I needed. The name of a guy that could help with a thing. Not what the thing itself was.”
“How many can talk without hurting themselves?” Beale said.
Cobb pursed his lips. “I would say none,” he said. “I can’t. My friend can’t. And Battles, he certainly can’t. Not that he would, in a million or so years, but if he’d like to, he couldn’t.”
“So then,” Beale said, “then it won’t come out. And Henry’s the pure driven snow.”
Cobb nodded. “You’re a very smart man, Donald Beale,” he said. “I think, I think maybe in the next couple weeks or so, I’ll visit a few towns. Talk to some people we trust. Get what their reaction is, to this crackpot idea.”
“Good idea,” Beale said, slapping him on the back. “And if it’s what I would expect, well then, go talk to Henry. I bet you won’t even need to remind him that what you want he has to do.”
9
Earl Beale had the late shift at Centre Street Motors in West Roxbury on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He had been tempted, starting shortly after Roy Fritchie left at 7:00 P.M., to turn out the lights and lock up well before the scheduled closing time of 9:00, but after four straight successful “bagouts,” as Penny called them, Waldo had caught him twice, and had promised to fire him the next time. “I get a base, you know, Earl,” Waldo had said. “I know there isn’t much business, some nights when we stay open late. But you never can tell, when impulse’ll hit ’em, and those’re the easiest sells. They get themselves a few beers, have something to eat, and all of a sudden they’re hot to trot. Who knows what happens, that starts it? The old buggy wouldn’t start without a jump, they went out to go to work inna morning? Their lousy fuckin’ brother-in-law just got himself a new one and’s rubbing their noses in it? There was a little snow, the ground, if it’s wintertime, and they got stuck, their own driveways, and said: ‘Screw it, I’m not getting new tires for
this junker’? Or it’s in the summer and the junker boiled over? Who the hell knows, sets them off? But it happens, and when it happens, well, they got to get a car tonight. Half the time they don’t even bother, try to jew you down. Just pay what the numbers are on the windshield. Those’re the gravy commissions, and if we’re not open to get them, my friend, someone else’ll get them instead.”
“Yeah,” Earl had said to Penny the night before, “but I never get any gravy. And I’m never gonna, either, long’s the nights they give to me’re just before some holiday, three-day weekend or like that. Now you just look at me working till nine tonight. Nobody’s gonna come in. You know where they’re all gonna be? Down at the super, getting their turkeys, buying their veggies and ice cream. Stop-and-Shop and Star’ll sell three trainloads of cranberries, and I won’t sell any cars. Sit around on my ass all night, waiting for someone, come in.”
“Take something to read,” she had said. “That’s what I’m gonna do. Sit around that damned courthouse all morning. Damn, who they kidding? I got to be there by eight forty-five, report to Probation and that crap, and I know I’ll be lucky if I’m through by lunch. If my case is called before lunch.”
“You should call up Nancy,” he had said. “It was her grass anyway. Make her go waste her time, stand up when they finally call you.”
“Huh,” Penny had said. “Easier said’n done, I think, buddy. No one’s seen Nancy in months. I run into Roberta, down at the hairdresser’s, she’s got a new guy named Arigo. And apparently this’s gonna be his first, you know, Thanksgiving since he walked out, his wife. So, he doesn’t wanna be around here, on the holiday and he doesn’t have a real girlfriend yet, so he asked Roberta, go out of town with him. You ever heard of Aruba? Anyone going there, I mean?”
Earl had said he had not. “Well, that’s where they’re going, she tells me. ‘This is gonna be good. Three years ago I’m cheerleading, right? Yelling that English beats Latin. Freezing my tight little ass off, going home to my mom’s lousy turkey. And now here I am, it’s Thanksgiving again, and I’m gonna be down in the sun. Down on the beach, South America way, they’ll probably feed me a lizard.’ ” Penny had paused. “You know what, Earl?” she’d said. “That’s what we should do.”
“Go to Aruba?” he had said. “How can I go there, I dunno where the place is? And anyway, we’re running out of money. I better sell a car pretty soon. I better sell three Cadillacs tomorrow night, is what I better do.”
“Well,” she had said, “if you didn’t still insist on always betting on those games that you think you’ve got a lock, we wouldn’t have that money thing, all the money problems. We had enough money, get us through Christmas. And you blew it all on football.”
“Look,” he had said, “just listen to me. There was not a thing wrong with those bets.”
She had snickered. “Nothing wrong with them,” she’d said, “except they were big losers.”
“I had the right teams, those three locked games,” he had said. “The only difference between me losing three thousand dollars—”
“Seven,” she had said absently. “You bet one on the first, and then you lost that. So you doubled up on the second. And when you lost that, you did it again. Add up one and two and four—it isn’t three you get, chum.”
“I told you I didn’t double down,” Earl had said. “I told you I didn’t do that.”
“Earl,” she had said, “you always do that. And, you always deny it. It’s like you won’t clean the toilet, and I mention it, and you say it isn’t yours. You tell me that you go at work. It’s the same with the betting’s it is with the toilet: it’s your shit but you won’t admit it. If Allen didn’t decide in October, take me that Chicago meeting, we’d’ve been right up shit’s creek, ’stead of just getting by.”
“Now there is a guy,” Earl had said, “there’s a guy that I’d like to be. There is a guy that leads a charmed life. The last time that Allen thought about money, he called up the people who print it. ‘I’m thinkin’ of going to Europe this summer. You guys gonna have enough stock?’ ”
“Yeah,” she had said, “well just keep in mind that he didn’t get it betting on dumb football games.”
“The difference,” Earl had said. “Those were good bets. I already told you that. The difference, you know what the difference was there? All three of those damned games combined? The first one I miss the spread because the Pats don’t kick a field goal, and then don’t score a touchdown, either. Field goal would’ve done it for me, but, no, they don’t do that. The second one, Packers up by two, the fucking spread is four, they’re practically at midfield and the clock is running out, and what do they do, go for first down, let the time expire? No, sir, they don’t, they try the field goal, forty-five yards in the wind, and they hit the goddamned thing. The third one, I am in pig heaven, Giants up by two touchdowns with three minutes left to play, and they have got the ball. Fumble, score. Niners kick off, now I’m up by seven. First fucking play from scrimmage and they throw an interception which the Niners bring back and score. Now it’s dead even. Got a push, okay, the money back. Niners kick off, less’n a minute, another goddamned fumble and another fucking field goal and I tear my ticket up. Those were not stupid bets I made. Those were damned good bets. It’s just, nobody knows, you can’t predict those things.”
“Huh,” she had said, “that’s what you think. I happen, think you’re wrong. I don’t know the guy’s name, and I don’t know where he lives, but the guy who’s got your money, I think he can predict. And he does pretty good at it. Pretty goddamned good, taking money from you of all people, think it’s all on the up-and-up. Must give him a million laughs, too. You think he’s just maybe smarter?”
“Ahh,” he had said, “can it, willya? Now I’m gettin’ all depressed. Isn’t there something we can do, get our minds off all this shit we always seem to be in?”
“You wanna take in a movie?” she had said.
“Nah,” he had said, “for something that costs money, it’s too much like TV. Just leave me alone, I guess. I’ll get over it. ’S funny, though. When I was in, especially after about a year, and I still had a long way to go, and it just hit me, you know? That I’d been in the can all this time, and I’d stood up pretty damned good, and I still wasn’t even halfway, my release date. It seemed like I’d been in there all my life, you know? Doing the same things every day, wearing the same fucking clothes. Seeing the same fucking people, half of which’re fucking animals, eating the same fucking food. When I was playing the ball there, about six weeks before the first practice, I used to go on the wagon, you know? No more beer for me. Go out running every morning. Lift the weights and all. Watch the diet, get my sleep, ‘got to report in shape,’ And then all through the season, I’d have two beers after games, never more’n two, and none the day before a game. I left more parties early? And it worked like a charm. And I hated it, and the only way I got through it was by knowing that when the grass started turning green, I could stop. Go and relax. So it was what? Five months? Six months at the most, and I was having fun. Prison I was not having fun. And it was not six months I’d been in there. It was a fucking year. And I wasn’t even close to having fun again.
“ ‘If I can just last it out,’ I used to think. “If I can just get through this, just make it to the end, someday I’ll get out and I’ll have fun again.’ Then I’d think: ‘Maybe I made a mistake. I must’ve made a mistake. I heard it wrong in court or something. They got the papers wrong. Or maybe I read them wrong.’ And I’d get up off my bunk and go through them again, and nothing’d changed. It was still five to seven, and the minimum time to be served was still two and a half, and I’d still done only one. Jesus, it was discouraging.”
She had frowned. “Two and a half,” she had said. “Two years and a half? I thought you only did less’n two.”
He had snorted. “Only less’n two,” he had said. “Nobody who’s done any real time says ‘only.’ I did nineteen months. They changed
the guidelines for nonviolent crimes, ’less they were mob related. Which course mine was, but I wasn’t sentenced under that part. It didn’t exist, I went in. So I came under the new ones, and I got out about five months early. Which of course meant at least half the guys on the street thought I turned snitch in the can, and I’m lucky I wasn’t clipped.”
“Didn’t they know, on the street?” she had said. “Didn’t they understand that?”
“Honey,” he had said, “you really want a tough assignment for yourself sometime, you try explaining, a guy with a gun, on a contract out on your ass, that the reason you’re out is that they changed the rules. It’s not because you turned rat. This is very difficult, a very hard thing to do. The guy with the gun is not thinking about Federal Prison Regulations. He is not even thinking about making you dead. As far as he’s concerned, he’s past that. You are whacked. Now the question on his mind is: Where’s he dump the body? Are you too big, the trunk? His mind’s not on regulations. It’s on practical things. The practical problems he’s got. I knew a guy in the jar that said he did a few guys. I think he was telling the truth, too. And he said to me: ‘The worst thing, the very worst thing, you got to take a guy out, is when he figures it out. What you’re there for. Well, it’s natural, I guess. He tries to talk you out of it. He will not shut up. He simply will not shut up. I did a guy in a bar once. Right inna fuckin’ bar there. S’posed to do him, the woods. And why did I do what I wasn’t supposed to? Because he wouldn’t shut up.’
“No,” Earl had said, “your average hit man, from you he does not want a lot of conversation. It’s a very tricky thing. I doubted I could pull it off. So the first thing I did, I got out, was go around and see a man and have a talk with him. Explain the situation, so nobody acted hasty, before they knew the facts. And he believed me, thank the good Lord for that, and His Blessed Mother, too, because I know for a fact he ditched two contracts on me from some real quick-tempered guys.
Trust Page 9
