Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

by George V. Higgins

  Gleason hesitated.

  “Also keeping in mind,” Consolo said, “that there’s a lot of other warrants out on this guy, that cops have got nothing to do with. He may not be technically, this minute, a fugitive from me, but there’s a lot of private citizens who’d be very interested in finding out who his contacts’ve been since he got out. There’s a lot of money lying around somewhere. Money that belongs to other people. Maybe they’re not nice people, and they expected to get it by having Nichols and Abbate retail lots and lots of dope, but they think it still belongs to them, and I bet they want it back. Sam took their consignment, and that didn’t make them glad. If he hasn’t got the profits on him when he turns up — which of course he won’t — anyone who finds him’s going to be very hot to find out where he put them. I don’t know if either one of you’s figured this out, but if Sammy gets nabbed by one of his old victims before he gets collared by us, he could be a very dead Sammy before too much time goes by.”

  “I should give a shit?” Gleason said. “Sam Tibbetts to me is in the same basket with Abdullah Bulbur Emir. He’s a bad actor. Always has been. Asshole buddies we are not. I get my preferences with him, I hope the wise guys get him first. Hogtie him with a fucking rope with his heels up his ass, so when he straightens out the legs, he shuts off his air supply. Throw him in his goddamned car and make him go to sleep. Second choice is: I hope you guys get him first, he resists arrest, and that you guys scrag him. That’s the way I feel.”

  Consolo smirked. “Harsh words for a guy you helped so much, counselor,” he said, snapping the notebook shut.

  Gleason scowled. “You cocksucker,” he said. “You still think I went in the tank on that case, don’t you.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Consolo said. “I just think it’s awful funny, the way that things turned out. I wonder, you know — you’ve this busy practice now and you’re doing pretty well collecting fees off the bad guys, and I wonder if maybe the fact that Sam got off the way he did, if maybe that didn’t have something to do with this prosperity. Who’s the other lead counsel on this Ianucci case? Don’t I know him from somewhere?”

  “John Morrissey’s always represented the heavy hitters, Fred,” Gleason said wearily. “John Morrissey’s been the guy to get when you’re in the deep shit since before the glacier went back.”

  “Yeah,” Consolo said, “but Terry Gleason didn’t used to be their regular second choice. He was a prosecutor. Isn’t it funny? Terry boots his last big case for the Commonwealth. To John Morrissey. Terry opens his private practice. He’s barely got the lease signed when the heavy rollers’re lining up around the block to give him fat retainers. Where’d they get your business card, Terry? Who might your rabbi be? John Morrissey, perhaps? Did John Morrissey promote you to those guys who hated you?”

  “Sure,” Gleason said. “Naturally he did. Hard’s it may be for you to believe this, Fred, I’m a damned good lawyer. Multiple-defendant case, Morrissey doesn’t want co-counsel that don’t know what they’re doing, screw things up for him. He wants people he can work with. Knew he could work with me.”

  “I’ll say,” Consolo said. “And if he had any doubts, Tibbetts got rid of them. You worked real good with him on that.”

  “Oh cut it out,” Gleason said. “I’m really sick of this.”

  “Here you got two men and two women,” Consolo said, “on trial for seven murders, all done the same day, in the same place, for the same reason. The two broads get convicted and get life, and they’re still in Framingham. The guy who pulled the trigger gets convicted also. The only change there’s been in James Walker’s address since Seventy-eight was when they changed the name of MCI Walpole to MCI Cedar Junction. And that’s the only change there will be. At least ’til he either stops getting in fights, and losing his good time, or he loses one of those fights and six guys with a long black car take him to his next destination — which’ll have a headstone on it and be his permanent address.

  “But the guy that planned the whole thing, that put the group together in the first place to finance the revolution by robbing armored cars, the guy that smelled out the coke in The Friary safe, and the money in there with it, his lawyer at the trial puts in some perjured evidence that the boss of the whole thing’s out of his gourd. And the prosecutor, which is you, the prosecutor doesn’t even bother to rebut it. The insanity defense? For this mastermind? And it works? Incredible. Strange to me, back then — still strange to me today.”

  “I rebutted it,” Gleason said. “I had my doc’s report in. What I didn’t do was refute it — which I couldn’t do because my doc didn’t see Sam Tibbetts until over a year after The Friary. Which was not the issue. Whether he was competent to stand trial in Nineteen-seventy-eight — it was whether he was capable of forming requisite intent, in Nineteen-seventy-seven. And my doc didn’t examine him then. So, naturally, he would’ve had to say on cross he didn’t know if Sam was crazy, thirteen months before he saw him. What else could he’ve said? He could only speculate.

  “You know,” he said, “and you really oughta think about this, Fred, but we did damned well to get any convictions in that case. John Richards at the time had his reservations about whether we had enough to go with. I was the one talked him into it, and he told me afterwards: ’Hey, never mind, Tibbetts cheats the hangman. He only cheated him a little — he’ll still do some time, and that’s not the Ritz he’s in. We broke up his fucking gang, and we did it mostly on your snow job. You should feel real proud.”

  Consolo snickered. “And a month after that,” he said, “less’n a month after Christina Walker’s boyfriend goes to Bridgewater — knowing all he’s got to do to get out is play-act some more, and ‘recover’ — three weeks or so after that happens, fearless prosecutor’s banging Christina and having a high old time. Weirdness added to strangeness: that’s the way I see it. Unless of course there’s some simple explanation that makes it very plain. And understandable.”

  Gleason sighed. He clasped his hands on the desk and shook his head. “Fred,” he said, “I’ve tried to like you. I heard all the stories, right after I met you, and I said: ‘Well, that’s all right. Keep an open mind. See how he acts around you. Wouldn’t be the first man had a bad rap on him. Maybe he’s just aggressive. That can be good in a cop.’

  “The trouble with you, Fred, though,” Gleason said, “the trouble with you’s you don’t learn. You, Mencken was talking about you: For every complex problem there is almost invariably a simple explanation — that’s almost invariably wrong. You get some half-baked idea based on partial ignorance, and you just wedge it edgewise into your brain, and it stays there. And after you get all the facts, after you cure your ignorance, if you ever do, you don’t go back and dig out that wrong idea and get rid of it. It just stays there like some fucking dinosaur that’s still roaming around and crashing into things, a hundred thousand years after all the dinosaurs died off. That’s why you’re dangerous.”

  Consolo laughed. “Think what you like, Terry,” he said. “I’ve got my job to do, and I still get to decide how I do that job. Until somebody orders me not to. Which nobody’s doing right now.”

  “John Richards was right,” Gleason said. “After that trial, I talked to the Loot, and John predicted, ’way back then, you’d never change your mind. ‘Fred’s not reasonable,’ he told me. ‘Fred thinks he knows how the world oughta work, and how things should come out. Nice and neat and squeaky clean. And when things come out all messy and wrinkled and spoiled, like this case did, Fred gets all upset. And he starts thinking somebody fucked it up on purpose. Doesn’t matter to Fred if they actually did. If he thinks they did, they did. And he does not change his mind. Fred’s a stubborn lad.’ ”

  “My mother used to say that,” Consolo said.

  “You should’ve listened to your mother more,” Gleason said.

  “I always listened to my mother,” Consolo said. “To everything she said. And one of the things she said was that I should stay stubbor
n, because my father was stubborn and he knew he could make a lot of money when people told him he was nuts. And he didn’t listen to them, and that’s exactly what he did. ‘What works with oregano and melted cheese,’ my mother used to say, ‘will work with something else. Stick to your guns and don’t let anybody tell you anything you want to do can’t be done. It almost always can.’ ”

  “Inspiring,” Gleason said. “Words to fucking live by.”

  Consolo shrugged. “Works for me,” he said. “Maybe I’m just lucky, but it seems to work for me.”

  “Okay,” Gleason said, “so have it your way. But I’m telling you: That jury convicted Beau James because Suffolk County juries back in Seventy-eight didn’t acquit big strong handsome niggers on murder charges unless those black men in the dock had their lawyers give those jurors plenty damned good reasons. And sometimes, not even then. And Beau James’s lawyer did not, because Walker wouldn’t let him. John Bigelow’s a son of a bitch to deal with, but even if he’d been an angel, he would’ve had to go with what his client gave him. Which was worse than nothing. Picture of arrogance. Supercilious Manhattan jigaboo, strutting around like he owned the place. The only thing he didn’t do was dare the goddamned jury to convict him, but he didn’t have to — they took it on faith.

  “The two women?” Gleason said. “California sluts. Kathy Fentress looked like Madam DeFarge, talked like Bela Lugosi, practically bragged she was a promiscuous bisexual, and then goes and spits on the judge. Jill Franklin had had Moe Klein to represent her, Moe with his head shaved and beard full of food, and his mouth full of revolutionary slogans. So they got convicted too. Those mostly good men and ladies true do not like folks like that.

  “But Sam?” Gleason said. “Sam’s a nice boy. From Newton Highlands. Former Boy Scout. Good churchgoer, even if he was Episcopalian. Comes from a hardworking professional family. Mummy and Daddy’re there every day, all four of their eyes filled with tears. Mom was a bit ineffective on the stand, but Dad was dynamite. Sam’s lawyer’s a Boston boy too, John Morrissey as I live and breathe, calm and polite and nice. Those jurors sat there and John showed them the truth about Sam. How he was always an honor student, this poor lad still small for his age. It was California that corrupted him, all those whores and whacked-out lotus-eaters, out at Stanford there, feeding on drugs and communist plots. Sam was led astray. Of course he was nuts when The Friary went down. He would’ve had to’ve been. Their hearts went out to him, and they let him off.” He paused. “That’s what happened, Fred,” he said. “I’m aware you never liked it, but that’s what happened. Just the same.”

  “You should’ve put Mackenzie on the stand,” Consolo said. “I said that at the time, and I’m saying it today. You should’ve said: ‘Fuck the agreement, I got to have him testify and he goes on the stand.’ Mackenzie could’ve told them what an animal Sam was. Behind the thin hair and the little gold glasses and the choirboy face, what a criminal genius there was. Mackenzie could’ve done that.”

  “We disagree on that, Fred,” Gleason said. “But even if he could’ve, next time John Richards, or the DA’s offices, or any other law enforcement officer in Massachusetts ever offered a deal to an informer after I did that, he would’ve been laughed out of town. You can’t go burning informers, Fred. No matter what’s at stake. Even you know that much.”

  Consolo shifted in the chair. He smiled. “You’re very persuasive, counselor,” he said. “I can see why you make a good living.”

  “It’s easy to be persuasive,” Gleason said, “when what you’re telling is the truth.”

  “I don’t believe it, though,” Consolo said.

  “I didn’t think you would,” Gleason said.

  “What I do believe,” Consolo said, “is that she knows where he is. And furthermore, that that dark lady probably told you down in Waterford that morning. And I want you to tell me.”

  “She didn’t,” Gleason said. “And even if she had, I still could not tell you.”

  Consolo nodded. He stood up. “I see what you mean about persuasion and the truth,” he said. “I am not at all convinced.”

  JULY 11, 1985

  27

  The store at the easterly end of the block on the north side of the Waterford Shopping Plaza was a big MediMart. Blue and white posters in its windows advertised a coupon sale of mouthwashes, panty hose, sanitary napkins, shaving cream and motor oil. Next to it there was a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shop. Two telephone company trucks, a blue and white police cruiser, a blue and white Ford Bronco II carrying police shield logos on its doors, a white US Mail truck and two private cars were parked in front of the doughnut shop. There were small clusters of two and three cars on the southerly side of the parking lot, near the entrances to the First National Bank of Waterford, the Omnidentix Clinic and the Commonwealth Savings and Loan offices. The rest of the lot was vacant. Flimsy pieces of waxed paper, discarded by doughnut eaters, lay silver in the sun on the pavement, stirring occasionally in the soft morning breeze.

  Consolo at 7:45 parked his burgundy Mercedes Benz 450 SL in one of the spaces in front of the drugstore and shut off the engine. He got out of the car and locked it. He put the keys in his jacket pocket and hitched up his pants. He walked to the door of the MediMart and tried it. It was locked. He faced toward the parking lot. No one was watching him. He turned right and headed toward the easterly end of the building.

  There was enough room between it and the sluggish brook coagulating beside the gravel upgrade of the westerly shoulder of Route 4 to accommodate six parking spaces and a large blue Dempster Dumpster. There was a white Chevrolet van parked in the third slot, between a black Ford pick-up truck and a blue Starion coupé, its grille facing the brick wall of the building. Consolo went around it to the passenger side and rapped twice on the windowless sliding freight door. He paused and then rapped twice again. He felt rather than heard movement in the van. He heard the latch being unlocked. The door slid open about an inch. He grabbed the edge of it with his left hand and slid it open just far enough to allow him to get in. He stepped up into the truck, stooping, and shut the door immediately behind him, making sure it latched. He locked it, groping for the lever as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness inside the van.

  The only light came from three ten-inch black-and-white television monitors on the shelf on the left side of the cargo bay. The only sounds were the intermittent squeak of a tape deck in need of cleaning and a beautifully rendered performance of Bach’s Second Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin being received on a speaker with a weak treble range.

  “Who’s in here this hour?” Consolo said, squinting at the bulky figure sitting on the swivel stool in front of the shelf, staring at the screens. Consolo hunkered down and rested his buttocks on a large metal box against the partition closing off the driver’s compartment. “That you is it, Peter?”

  “Affirmative,” the figure said.

  Consolo now could see well enough to count two cardboard Dunkin’ Donuts containers near the right hand of the figure. “One of those coffees for me,” he said, reaching for it.

  The other man stuck his right hand out and spanned his fingers to cover both of the containers. “Conditionally,” he said.

  “Conditioned on what?” Consolo said

  “Conditioned on you not giving me a whole loadah shit about not going inna fuckin’ coffee shop, the morning,” he said.

  “You know my views on that,” Consolo said, grasping for the container nearest him and taking it out from under the fingers. “You fuck up this detail getting chummy with the locals, eating crullers in the morning, drinking soup the afternoons, I will personally be glad to hash up your jacket with a memo stating how I told you not to do it.”

  “Thank you very much, Sergeant,” the other man said. “Want you to know: It’s one the big pleasures in my life, working under your command and getting all the benefit, your vast experience. ’Cept the time Denise called up and told me we had herpes, and she knew hers came from me, it�
��s about the most fun I have had since Vietnam.”

  Consolo removed the plastic cover from the coffee container and sipped the contents gingerly. The coffee was very hot. “It’s such a pleasure for you, Peter,” he said, “the fuck don’t you get here in the morning, you’re supposed to, ’stead of about two minutes ahead of me? If that?”

  “Very simple,” the other man said, taking the other coffee container and removing its cover, “those of us have wives and kids, drive your basic junkers ’cause it’s all we can afford — we now and then have the experience, the morning, where the fuckin’ car won’t start. Which mine did not, this morning.”

  “You should plan your life better, Peter,” Console said, blowing on the coffee. “Wasn’t my decision you know, you ought to get married and have about eight kids. I know love’s grand, and all that shit, but you go around indulging yourself like that, it’s pretty hard to swing the payments on that lovely German steel.”

  “I suppose,” the other man said. Consolo now could make out the expression on his face in the light from the TV screens. It was one of distracted resignation.

  “Well, Peter,” Consolo said, leaning forward to study the images, “what do we seem to have here this fine day, for all our difficulties? Tell me everything you know. Don’t leave anything out.” The screen nearest him showed the door to an apartment; it was numbered “2N.” The screen in the middle showed the outside entrance at the rear of an apartment building. The screen on the left showed the front entrance of an apartment building. There were no people visible on any of the screens. The music continued.

  “I think she’s getting dressed,” Peter said. “Fitzy told me the radio came on the usual time, six sharp, and he heard the John flush and the coffee grinder. Hasn’t been anything since then ’cept this fuckin’ music she likes so much, and she hasn’t been out for the paper. No calls, in or out. Just the goddamned fiddle music, sounds like somebody hurtin’ a cat.”