“And then there was that other thing,” Magro said, “you remember that, Marty? There was an awful lot of bullets down the Avenue that night. The door Terry come out of, it’s practically shot off the hinges. Now keep in mind, the Digger’s got a machinegun.”
“Ah, come on,” Jay said, “you know better’n believe that. That old fuckin’ story. That’s just a story guys like to tell, isn’t that right, Digger?”
“Sure,” the Digger said. “The fuck I’d be doing with a machinegun?”
“Well,” Magro said, “you could’ve shot Terry Maloney with it. Them’re all forty-fives in him. They could’ve come out a grease-gun.”
“Could’ve come out a forty-five, too,” the Digger said. “I used to know a guy had one of them, too, kept it under the front seat of his car, last I heard, pointed it at a guy once or twice.”
Magro and Jay spoke together. Jay said, “Ah, Dig, that was just in case of trouble or something, and besides, I didn’t have anything against Terry. Except he tried to set me up.” Magro said, “It wasn’t my car and it wasn’t my gun, Dig. Just a couple things I used to borrow now and then, when I needed something.” The Digger, Magro and Jay laughed.
Harrington said, “You guys’re making me nervous, you know.”
The Digger patted Harrington on the right shoulder. “Nothing to be worried about, Harrington,” he said, “nobody’s got anything tonight.”
“Digger,” Jay said, “you haven’t really got a machinegun, have you?”
“Well,” the Digger said, twisting around slightly to get his left elbow and forearm further onto the back of the front seat, “I, well, I’ll tell ya the truth, Marty, yeah. I got ten machineguns, actually. You know how it is, you’re inna booze business, you got three kinds of cops coming around all the time, you buy your license, you serving kids, you running the whorehouse, you keeping maybe some stuff in the cellar, nobody, somebody forgot to pay taxes, that kind of thing. They’re always coming in and looking up my ass. I tell you guys something, I dunno why none of them eight or nine hundred guys ever finds my ten machineguns. Got them right out in plain sight in the cellar there. Big wooden box, got a sign painted on it: ‘Don’t anybody look in this box. Doherty’s Ten Machineguns.’ Beats me how come they don’t find it.”
“Couldn’t’ve been the Digger,” Jay said to Magro. “Digger says he don’t even have a machinegun.”
“Yeah, right,” Magro said, “must’ve been that other guy I keep hearing about, got a forty-five auto with a fifty-shot clip, carries this telephone pole around with him, just nails her right up to the pole and lets off the whole thing with a wire. Must’ve been him. Or a whole lot of guys, all got forty-fives.”
Harrington’s car traveled through Kenmore Square. He took the left and drove up the hill past Fenway Park.
“Maloney was a funny guy,” Jay said. “I never heard of him. Then all of a sudden it seems like there’s nobody else around but Terry Maloney. Guys were saying you couldn’t even start to think of something, five minutes later Terry’s already doing it.”
“Yeah,” the Digger said, “and fuckin’ it up. Every time the son of a bitch went out, somebody got shot. More cops down around the Avenue’n they got in the whole FBI. I bet I know six or seven guys, got in the shit doing something nice and quiet and the cops’re so busy looking around for Maloney they see these guys, you know?”
“Well,” Jay said, “there was Greggie Halb, there. Got grabbed down the track.”
“Sure,” the Digger said. “Terry set him up, though. The cops had Terry figured for what Greggie’s doing, and they go and talk to Greggie, and Greggie lets them go right on thinking it’s Terry. So Terry finds out and dumps Greggie. I didn’t blame Terry for that one. That’s about the only thing, though. Terry, he was a kid, he grew up out to Saint Agatha’s, there, he didn’t understand anything, you know? That was his problem. His family had some dough. His brother, Billy, the one that sells the cars, big asshole buddies with my brother, that’s what Terry should’ve been. He didn’t know how to do them other things.”
“Billy Maloney knows how to do a few things,” Jay said. “I know a guy, retired from the Post Office, wanted to be some kind of court officer.”
“Oh, sure,” the Digger said. “That kind of thing, him and my holy brother’re down to five dinners a week, shaking hands and their pictures in the paper. But Billy, actually I think Billy’s kind of a class guy. He give Terry the regular funeral there, just like he dies in his mother’s arms, what is it, that cemetery off of Brush Hill there, just like Terry’s the greatest thing inna world.
“That was a funny thing,” the Digger said, “none of the guys go, of course, because we all figure, what the hell, Terry’s been tryin’ to fuck everybody, all the time he was alive, he’s dead, fuck him. But my holy brother goes, and then he comes down the place after and he gives me this big speech, all the grief Terry handed his family, Paul sure don’t want me doing nothing like that to him. My great fuckin’ brother. So I say, ‘Look, I’m glad you told me. I was just going out tonight, see if I could get somebody to shoot me or something, looks like such a great thing and all. But seeing things, your point of view, I’m not gonna do it. I changed my mind.’ So he got all pissed off and all. He always does that. I ever told him how Terry tried to set me up, he would’ve shit.”
It was ten forty-five when Harrington turned the Galaxie off Route Nine inbound and entered the parking lot at Valle’s. Jay edged forward in the back seat. “Supposed to be down in the back, there,” he said. “Tan Merc.”
“Keys’re in it?” the Digger said.
“In it, and it’s wiped down,” Jay said. “That’s a pretty good kid, you know? He’s smart and he’s dependable. You get him to do something, there’s no complaints or anything and he does it fuckin’ right. I’m gonna have to get him something bigger.”
Harrington stopped the Galaxie behind the Mercury sedan. “All right,” the Digger said, turning again toward the back seat, “you got the gloves, Mikey-mike.”
Magro had torn the paper off his parcel. He opened the box and removed three wads of beige cotton. They stank of oil. He gave one to Jay and one to the Digger. He unrolled the remaining wad and spread out two thin cotton gloves.
“Jesus, Dig,” Jay said, putting gloves on, “you must be getting old.”
“I don’t like it,” the Digger said, stretching the gloves over his hands. The cuffs stopped an inch short of his wrists, leaving the heels of his palms uncovered. He wiggled his fingers. “I just figure, this’s big enough, somebody’s probably gonna be interested enough, look for prints. Might as well not take any chances.”
Magro reached into the box and pulled out a heavy-duty bolt cutter.
“That’s wiped?” the Digger said.
“Three-in-One Oil,” Magro said.
“Okay,” the Digger said. “Now, it’s almost ten to eleven. Harrington, one thirty, you be waiting in the Howard Johnson’s on One Twenty-eight next to the Turnpike.”
“Gonna be closed,” Harrington said. “What if the state cops come around, ask me, did my girlfriend forget to show up or something.”
“Open tonight,” the Digger said. “Coffee for drivers. Go in and sit down where you can see the lot. Soon’s you see us get in the car, out you come and we go home.”
“Okay,” Harrington said.
“Now another thing,” the Digger said. “You’re gonna have some time on your hands. Take this paper and the box and get rid of it.”
“Where the Christ I do that?” Harrington said.
“Well,” the Digger said, “you look around some, is what you do. You asked me, I’d say, find a motel or something, shopping center, got one of them Dumpsters, and throw it in.”
“Somebody’ll see me,” Harrington said.
“Oh for Christ sake,” Magro said, “doesn’t matter if they do. Nobody pays any attention to people throwing junk away.”
“You didn’t mention,” Harrington said to the Digger,
“I hadda throw anything away.”
“Harrington,” the Digger said, “I also didn’t mention you could have a couple cups of coffee while you’re waiting for us. It’s okay, believe me, you can still do it. And you’re taking the garbage out, too, just like I say. So quit arguing with me and just fuckin’ do it, all right? Just do it and be at the Johnson’s, like I said, will you do that?”
“I’ll be there,” Harrington said.
MAGRO DROVE WEST on Beacon Street.
“It’s a green Vega,” Jay said, “right up here in front of the barbershop, ’cross the street from the Mobil.”
“Where’s the fuckin’ U-Haul?” the Digger said.
“In the station with all the other U-Hauls,” Jay said. “In the morning they had nine or ten of them, now they got ten or eleven of them, they stayed closed all day and in the middle of the afternoon, they’re all home watching the ballgame, the kid pulls up, backs her in, unhooks and drives away. Calls me up: ‘Went like a charm,’ he said. ‘Waited over in Cambridge, this dude comes along in a Vette with Michigan plates, I let him unload the trailer, he goes in the apartment the last time, I hooked it.’ Then he tells me, he’s laughing like hell, ‘Tonight I’m going back and hook the Vette. I got a guy down in New York I call, gimme a full bill for it. Thanks for the job, Marty.’ The Vega, I ask him, you get the car all right? He says, ‘Grabbed her right off the lot in Brockton this morning. No sweat. Took her over through Randolph and took the plates off an Olds at the Holiday. Wait’ll that guy gets up.’ ”
Magro stopped the Mercury next to the green Vega Kammback. Jay got out of the Mercury. “Need help with the trailer?” Magro said.
“Nope,” Jay said, “just go ahead. Three minutes.”
Magro parked the Mercury in the Post Office lot, finding a space between a chocolate-colored Porsche 911T and a Ford Country Squire. The Digger and Magro got out. Magro took the bolt cutter out of the rear seat. He held it against his body with his left arm; the rubber grips were tucked into his armpit and he cupped the short, blunt blades in his fingers.
“Nice of the government,” the Digger said, “made a parking lot for the movies.”
The Digger and Magro stepped through the border of the parking lot, between the low shrubs. At the sidewalk they turned left and walked down past the supermarket. In the middle of the block they waited for a blue Cadillac convertible, top down and driven by a man with a bald head, to pass. It left behind a short verse of rock music. They crossed the street and went into the alley behind the Steinman block.
The Steinman block is a four-story brick building facing Beacon Street on the south. Cabot Street is at its westerly end. The northerly side backs onto the alley; it has receiving areas for the retail stores that occupy the first floor. The building is two hundred thirty feet long, sixty feet deep at its widest point.
The Digger and Magro walked up the alley to the third receiving area. It is surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence equipped with a double gate. The gate was closed and padlocked.
“That Marty is a smart bastard,” the Digger said. “That fuckin’ fence, see? Originally the guy that owns this is gonna give Marty a key or else he’s gonna leave the locks open onna gate. ‘Uh uh,’ Marty says, ‘that’ll tell ’em just like we left a note.’ So he turns it down. Then I come around, he starts thinking about it, comes out here and looks. Them posts’re too far apart. There’s about twelve feet between them posts. Thing like this, shouldn’t be more’n four, six at the most.”
“Beautiful,” Magro said. “How come?”
“There’s a fuckin’ water main under there, gas main or something. Some kind of shit. It’s right near the top. They hadda spread out the posts to miss the pipes.”
The Digger and Magro walked past the gates and stepped in behind the westerly fence. Cars passed on Cabot Street. The Digger and Magro stepped into the shadows. When their eyes adjusted they could see Pavilion in blue script on a small sign over the loading dock. The Digger knelt near the pole closest to the building wall. He took the chain-link fabric in his hands.
Magro opened the bolt cutter and started snapping the links nearest the pole. As he progressed, he and the Digger stood up. About five feet from the ground he stopped cutting.
“The other side,” the Digger whispered, “come on, willya?”
Magro wiped his forehead on the back of his left glove. “Just the same as always,” he whispered, “I do the fuckin’ work and you bitch about it.”
“I’ll cut, you want,” the Digger said.
Magro handed the bolt cutter to the Digger. Magro held the chain-link fabric taut against the next pole. The Digger opened the jaws of the bolt cutter their maximum inch. Then he brought the rubber grips together. He worked rapidly, the sweat breaking out on his forehead as the links popped.
“Hurry up,” Magro said.
“Shut the fuck up,” the Digger said. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
The green Vega and the U-Haul turned into the alley in front of the supermarket as the Digger reached the five-foot mark. The Digger and Magro pushed the fabric inward and ducked under it into the receiving area. Then they turned and pushed the fabric upward, bending upward so that it hooked on the x-ends at the top of the fence.
Jay stopped the Vega and the trailer just beyond the receiving area. The Digger and Magro saw the backup lights come on. Jay swung the trailer into the receiving area next to Pavilion. He shut the lights down to parking. The Vega and the trailer moved forward. When they were straight, the backup lights came on again. Jay’s head showed at the driver’s side window. He backed the trailer into the Pavilion area through the hole in the fence. He cramped the wheels of the Vega and the trailer backed up to the loading dock.
Magro stepped forward and unlatched the door of the trailer. Jay got out of the car. He straddled the trailer hitch to open the rear door of the car. The Digger went to the fence. He pushed the cut section forward until the links rode off the x-ends. He lowered the cut portion slowly to the ground.
At the loading dock the Digger said, “You guys watch your ass, you get near the fence. Ends’re sharper’n knives.”
Magro had vaulted onto the loading platform. “Cut yourself?” Jay said. “You wanna look out, you’re liable to get lockjaw from that.”
“Nah,” the Digger said. “Scratched myself.”
“You guys having a meeting or something?” Magro said. “I try this thing or not?”
“Yeah,” Jay said.
Magro stooped and grasped the handle of the overhead loading door. As he pulled, the latch snapped. The aluminum door rose silently. “Jackpot,” he whispered.
The Digger and Jay clambered onto the platform. Each of them cursed. “When’s the fuckin’ movie get out, now?” the Digger said, breathing heavily.
Jay looked at his watch. It had a luminous dial. “Forty minutes,” he said.
“We better haul ass,” the Digger said.
Magro pushed the door all the way up. The only sound was the rollers on the track. “Kosher,” Magro said. “No alarm switch. He didn’t shit us.”
They went inside. They waited until their eyes had adjusted to the deeper darkness. “Okay,” the Digger said, when the racks of furs were visible. “Let’s fuckin’ go, somebody comes out of the movie early.”
“Nobody leaves early,” Jay said, “it’s a skin flick. They got everything in it but that Great Dane you used to see all the time. They’re all sitting there thinking about how they’re gonna do it the same way, they get home.”
The Digger and Jay each wheeled a rack to the edge of the loading platform, Magro guiding them from the front. Magro jumped to the ground. The Digger and Jay peeled the furs off the hangers and dropped them to Magro. Magro put them in the trailer.
“Take it easy,” the Digger said, “throw the damned stuff around like that, Mikey-mike. That’s expensive stuff.”
“Animals didn’t take it easy,” Magro said. “Shut your big fuckin’ mouth and keep workin’.�
�� He put furs in the car.
The Digger and Jay pulled the stripped racks back into the building, the wooden handles clacking. They brought out full racks, and the wheels squeaked in the darkness. They emptied and returned all of the racks in the receiving area.
“Fine,” Jay said, checking his watch. “Nineteen racks, thirty-four minutes.” He jumped off the loading platform.
The Digger looked back inside once. Then he jumped heavily from the platform. Jay got into the Vega. The Digger walked toward the fence. Magro jumped lightly to the ground. He trotted to the fence behind the Digger. They rolled the fence fabric up again, but did not hook it.
Jay started the Vega. It moved forward, canted back on its rear springs. At the fence Jay said, “You got four minutes. Set off the alarm and run like a bastard.”
“No running,” the Digger said. “Alarm goes soon’s the movie lets out. See you in Worcester.”
The Vega and the trailer went through the hole in the fence. The Digger and Magro bent the wire fabric inward at waist level. When they released it, it stood slightly away from the posts. Magro picked up the bolt cutter.
The Vega and the trailer headed up the alley. The Digger and Magro saw it reach Cabot Street, hesitate and swing right.
Magro went back to the platform. He climbed up. He could see the Digger holding the corner of the wire. He could see the front of the theater on Cabot Street. He waited.
A man wearing a bright-green shirt opened the doors of the theater fully and stopped them against snubs on the sidewalk. One car went by on Cabot Street. Three women and a man emerged from the theater. The man paused and lit a cigarette. Several more people came out and lit cigarettes. A large number of people came out and the people on the sidewalk moved away. Magro could hear engines starting. He could see the Digger motionless at the fence.
Magro turned the right side of his body away from the door. He allowed the bolt cutter to slip down through his left hand until he held it by one of the rubber grips. Turning his body slightly, he used a bowling motion to scale the bolt cutter noisily along the floor toward the interior door. He heard it strike, hard, and he heard the door snap open.
The Digger's Game Page 15
