“Some union’s getting fucked, then,” Dowd said. “Nickie’s selling out the stagehands and electricians for a mess of pottage they’re not even gonna get to see—him and McKeach’re gonna keep it for themselves.”
Naughton laughed. “Most likely,” he said. “What a son-of-a-whore that Cistaro is, huh? Long’s there’s a dollar in it, he must not give a shit what kind of trash he has to see to get it.”
“No big need to, I guess,” Dowd said. “ ’til we catch him at something, at least.”
“And how long we been trying?” Naughton said. “Eighteen, twenty years, I bet. I know it’s gotta be at least that. Remember the first time I took any notice of him. Came in one night, line of duty, right after the Danas reopened it. Someone heard Abie Sayer’d relocated here; this joint was gonna be his new base for his loan-sharking business, we finally slapped the padlocks on the Paddock Grille for known felons in actual control and ownership—chiefly meaning him. No sign of Abie, but no trouble spotting Cistaro. Sittin’ right up at the bar, in the middle—which by itself, up-and-coming young hood, not known for anything serious yet, having himself a beer and a sandwich after a long but-not-too-tiring day of wrongdoing? Wouldn’t’ve meant a lot to me. But the guy who was with him did—Al DeMarco, FBI.
“Never thought that much of DeMarco, even though a lot of people I knew then thought he shat vanilla ice cream—old Commissioner Ferris was in awe of him. Course if Frank saw it had ‘FBI’ written on it, he was liable, bless himself and genuflect. Best investment that outfit ever made was ‘selecting,’ not just giving, Saint Francis Ferris twelve weeks of brainwashing at Quantico. ‘There’s a chapel right there on the grounds. So we were able to start each day down there with Mass and communion, just like I do here at home.’
“After that he was convinced the only reason the Virgin appeared at Fatima was because she’d been blown off course the way down, bad weather over the Azores, on her way to FBI headquarters.
“But still, if DeMarco was interested in this Cistaro kid, that meant we oughta be, too, so from that moment on, I was. He did know his bird book of hoods; if Al DeMarco thought this place was a promising place to chat up young gunsels, probably meant it was. Miss Bright-eyes wasn’t here then.”
“Right,” Dowd said as the waitress came back. “Ettie,” he said, “my friend the superintendent here was just telling me how you and he’ve kept your youth while I’ve aged terribly. He won’t tell me how you’ve done it; maybe you will—where did I go wrong?”
She laughed, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe you’ve been workin’ too hard,” she said. “Myself, I’ve got so much seniority around here now I scarcely have to lift a finger anymore now, ’less I want to. Only wait on friends these days, and since I don’t have that many of them, I don’t have to work very hard.”
Naughton pretended dismay. “Oh, I would doubt that,” he said. “You must be on your feet all the time.”
She dimpled and said: “Will it be the fish and chips as usual?”
Naughton pretended chagrin. “Oh, I suppose so,” he said.
“And you, James, as well?” she said, collecting the menus.
“No imagination either,” he said. “Fried shrimp. Skip the fries so I can have the onion rings. And a fresh Bass Ale when the food’s ready.”
“I’m all set,” Naughton said, tapping his iced-tea glass.
“A remarkable, strange devil, isn’t he,” Dowd said after she had left.
“Arthur McKeon,” Naughton said. Dowd nodded, hunching forward and resting his elbows on the table. Naughton nodded back. “Yes, he is that. In fact I had a woman actually tell me one night that that’s who he really is—the devil, Satan himself. And she wasn’t givin’ me the leg, either. She believed every word she was saying about him. ‘You’ll never get him. He knows what you’re trying to do to him before you know yourselves. He can go where he wants, whenever he wants; do anything he wants to do, to anyone he wants—and get away with it—always. He can probably change his shape, it suits him, just be someone else, somewhere else, if he likes. You guys’re all wasting your time, trying to catch him and put him in jail. Playin’ games—big little boys.’ She said that to me, and she was perfectly sane.”
5
DOWD LAUGHED INCREDULOUSLY. “What in God’s name’d he do to her?” Dowd said.
“Or someone dear to her,” Naughton said. “I really don’t know—maybe nothing. Doesn’t matter—from McKeach’s point of view the end result’s the same. A lot of people believe he incarnates evil. And if enough people think like she does, believe what she said to me, she may very well be right: We’ll never get him.
“We should be able to do it ourselves, no grand jury, nothing. Just go into court and say, ‘All right, Your Honor, Commonwealth vee McKeach et al.: here’s the deal. Arthur F. McKeon, alias “McKeach,” alias “Uncle Mack,” is a menace to the good order of society. He commits all sorts of crimes. Here’s a partial list of all the wicked deeds we know he’s done as of the close of business last June thirtieth; we think that’s the end of his fiscal year. We’ll begin with his early career.
“ ‘We know around forty years ago he started extorting money from people; beating up people and killing people. He fixed horse races, prizefights, probably college basketball games, and at least one election each for seats on the Boston City Council and the Governor’s Council. He stole union funds, diverting members’ dues and embezzling their pension money. He corrupted public officials—tax assessors, cops on the beat, building inspectors, municipal liquor-licensing board inspectors, two state members of the Alcoholic Beverage Control, and a member of the state racing commission. Once he bribed a fire marshal setting occupancy limits for a dance hall. This was all back in the days when he was working for Brian Gallagher, otherwise known as Brian G., and more favorably, too, by most people—they knew Brian G. was tough, but they believed he had a heart.
“ ‘And we’re just getting warmed up here. We know as soon as McKeach figured he’d learned all Brian could teach him, plus a thing or two that Brian G.’d had no idea he was putting in his head, sometime in nineteen sixty-six McKeach, having become Brian G.’s first deputy, decided that all by himself he could make people do the things that he was now ordering them to do by transmitting orders from Brian. He realized what mattered when you ordered people around was their perception you had the power to hurt them if they didn’t.
“ ‘As it’d been, they’d seen him as having that power because Brian’d delegated it to him. But McKeach saw their perception was the power. This was before he started really reading books—mostly on electronic surveillance, I think, judging by his success in defeating it—but as a lot of people’ve since learned to their sorrow, Arthur may’ve lacked formal schooling but his intuitive intelligence was topnotch. He didn’t read Lord Acton’s book, but he found out just the same that power abhors a vacuum, and he figured out if he created one in the space that Brian occupied, the power would then probably pull him in to exercise it—for himself. All he had to do was make Brian go into a very deep sleep some night, and immediately take control; then he would have the power.
“ ‘I doubt Brian G.’d taught or intended to teach Arthur that. Most likely he didn’t realize McKeach’d learned it until the instant when he got out of the back seat of his seven-passenger black Caddy Fleetwood in the parking lot behind the old Boston Arena and saw his best pal McKeach coming out of the shadows, firing. There’s gratitude for ya, huh?
“ ‘We’re inclined to believe what he was firing was probably his favorite weapon, thirty-caliber M-two selective-fire military carbine fitted with a thirty-round, staggered-row box magazine, modified to about eighteen inches in length by sawing off the stock. We think this because we found nineteen spent shell casings in the immediate area. Medical examiner determined that a total of eleven out of thirty rounds hit Brian G. in his head and thorax. The wounds were instantly fatal. Doctors in the emergency room at BCH dug three rounds out of Brian’s driver an
d the lab techs found four bullets embedded in various parts of the limo. We dunno where the other slug went, but if he could put nineteen pretty much where he wanted them, firing a light-weight and very nervous weapon at full automatic, you’d have to say that McKeach probably deserves his reputation as a marksman.
“ ‘Brian’s driver recovered nicely, but to the surprise of absolutely no one had no idea who could’ve shot him—and couldn’t help us at all to find out who drilled Brian. After the chauffeur got better, McKeach showed his compassionate side by making him the manager of a Brighton liquor store his late employer’d controlled.
“ ‘Further—we know that shortly afterwards, McKeach teamed up with Nicholas Cistaro, a.k.a. the Frogman, and they conspired with each other and with divers other persons whose names are unfortunately unknown, to do and commit sundry illegal acts, including bankrolling major shipments of illegal drugs and providing safe warehouses for the storage thereof, and—–’
“And so on,” Naughton said, “far into the night. The problem is we can’t do it that way, frustrating though it is. We have to go through the grand jury and we have to have witnesses who helped McKeach do bad things, but’ve now had a change of heart. Usually people undergo such changes because they’re very proud of the tans they cultivate at the beach every year, and believe us when we tell them if they don’t talk they’re never gonna see the sun shine again. They become upset, and want to tell us about what they did with such people as McKeach, and what they saw them do to others.
“So, in order to hook him we’ve gotta find people who know what he’s done because they helped him plan it and then helped him do it, or did it for him, on his orders—and convince them to testify for us. The only way I know of doing that that I ever saw work—even it doesn’t, always; some people’re too proud to become finks—is to make them more afraid of what we can and will do to them, if they don’t talk, than they already are of what McKeach can and will do to them if they do.
“Mighty hard to do, and that’s a big advantage for him. Potential witnesses know whatever pain we may inflict on them if they refuse to help us, we won’t maim or kill them—or their loved ones. And, with good reason, they’re convinced that if they do help us, McKeach is not only capable of doing such things but absolutely certain to do them. He will kill them himself or have someone else kill them, to prevent them from harming him if he can or to punish them after they’ve harmed him. Even if he has to reach out from prison or the grave to do it—both of which they believe he could do without breaking a sweat.
“When people really do think that, there’s no way we can make them believe that we can protect them. Where McKeach’s concerned there’s no such thing as a Witness Protection Program. They believe he can and he will find them, get at them from wherever he is—wherever they or their loved ones are—and retaliate against them, if they go up against him. That’s why we’ve never had any witnesses, simple as that. His henchmen and his lackeys, disgruntled prat-boys and spiteful ex-girlfriends—they won’t have that lovely, law-abiding change of heart. No one’ll dare help us. Proof’s in front of your eyes—he’s devoted a mere quarter century or so since he did his last stretch to blatant criminal activities, day after day and night after night, right under our very noses, and we haven’t laid a glove on him.
“It’s an aura that he has. A lot of people who dislike McKeach—and a lot of people who fear him—he’s never done anything to, personally. They’ve just been hearing stuff about him ever since they were young kids—this all-encompassing power that he has, to do evil. The people who repeat these stories without having any idea of whether they’re true—they’re doing McKeach’s work for him.
“And there’s a hell of a lot of them. Sometimes it’s like they’re like Seventh Day Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses—everywhere you look in Greater Boston, there’s another one. If his name comes up when you’re talking to someone in the main Registry Office, and Rita Gaspari’s within earshot, she’ll drop what she’s doing—come over and tell you what a savage bastard McKeach is. Her sister married Malachy Gallagher.”
“Brian G. was her brother-in-law,” Dowd said.
“You got it,” Naughton said, nodding. “Brian … My father knew Brian Gallagher. He had a lot of money that he didn’t get by workin’ hard, but he wasn’t some mystery figure with magical powers that McKeach is now—he wasn’t glamorous. People tended to avoid him unless they did business with him, but they weren’t afraid of him on general principles—the way they are of McKeach or even the black gangbangers you got today in North Dorchester.
“Brian G. was a criminal, sure; he was outside the law. But at the same time, he stood for order. If you as a private citizen figure that there’s bound to be crime, no matter what the cops do—as most people do, and I’m one of them—then what you want is some assurance that if you tolerate it you won’t get hurt. And that if you don’t take part in it, you won’t get hurt by the cops. Brian didn’t pretend to answer officially for the cops—though on behalf of some I think he could’ve ’cause I think they worked for him—but on behalf of the outlaws, Brian G. gave that assurance. And his word was good.
“Brian G. got respect as the head hoodlum. In a rough sense of justice you could say he deserved it. He was good at it and knew it. He kept the peace.
“Before Brian, our guys did it the same way we did things across the water, stealing pigs and poaching pheasants from the Protestant landlords. We were all independent contractors—just went out one night and did it. One guy ran the protection rackets—another one smuggled the Irish Sweeps tickets in; set up his own network to sell them. Prohibition? Bunch of guys got fairly rich bringing the booze in on boats. Haulin’ it up and down the coast, one bunch the bootleggers who owned the boats and trucks, another group that retailed it. There was no structural continuity to it—all freelancers, strictly short term. They made an alliance to do something; lasted ten years? That was unusual. They respected a guy because he had what they needed to do what they wanted to do, sell what they had to sell, today. Thirty years later still fly-by-nighters, sellin’ TVs off the backs of trucks when TV was still a novelty, one day, hijacking a load of dry goods in Connecticut the next.
“Brian G. was your solid citizen. He set up and ran a diversified, ongoing business. Knew how a good chief executive hood should act. With dignity. Looked like he was offering pretty much the same goods and services the underworld’d always offered—but his philosophy was different. He unified the people who delivered the goods and services in Southie—and later on, outside of Southie. The law said nobody could deliver that kind of stuff anywhere in or outside of the city, but he did it. He did it by consolidating the common interest in doing business without interference. So when he got through it was impossible for anyone from outside to come in and strong-arm him, and it was impossible for anyone inside to rise up and compete with him.
“Before and right after the war if you wanted to play the numbers, according to my father, you saw Toby Hannigan. He was World War One disabled vet, bad left leg. Ran the newsstand, Toby’s Corner, sold the numbers with the papers and cigars and cigarettes on the corner of East Fifth. He probably paid protection to some guy from Dorchester—who didn’t really protect Toby very much but came around faithfully for his cut. Toby had no complaint—the upside was he kept most of the profits. The downside was that he had to keep a certain cash reserve on hand—which obviously made him worth holding up. Therefore Toby kept his nineteen eleven Colt forty-five army combat pistol under the counter—any losses came out of him, so he was willing to take risks to prevent them. So there was that element of danger to it, but basically it was entirely his business.
“After nineteen fifty, say, if you went to Toby’s and you bought a paper, you were still buying it from Toby, the person, but if you bought the number, you understood that you were buying it from Brian. Still the same number; found it in the same place—last three digits of the Treasury balance, back page of the Record Seven Rac
es. Mathematically, nine ninety-nine to one against you; the payoff if you hit was six hundred to one.
“That aspect of the business Toby now ran for Brian. Brian’s runner picked up the play in the afternoon. Brian’s runner brought back any payoffs the same night. Toby had the same interest in the number you bought as he did the bottle Coke you got for a nickel out of the machine; he let the Coca-Cola people put it in and keep it filled: he got a commission. Didn’t have to keep the numbers bankroll in the shop anymore—someone hit the number, Brian’s runner brought the payoff around. But now no one in his right mind even thought about sticking Toby up—that’d be robbing Brian G., which’d amount to signing your death warrant.
“If you hit a run of bad luck bettin’ on the ponies with Tommy the Book—lost a little more’n you could pay right off and couldn’t borrow it from the credit union—that’d mean you’d have to tell the wife, and she didn’t know you bet? You’d go down Butchie Morgan’s after work on Monday night and borrow it from Jakie Doyle. You probably asked Jake for two hundred—the hundred you’re down with Tom, plus another hundred, planning to get back what you already lost, plus a fat profit from investing on this other horse on Saturday you know is a sure thing. This’s called ‘digging your hole a little deeper.’ The second horse turns out to be a dog too, naturally, so on your payday every week after that for forty weeks ’til you got Jakie paid off, you gave him fifteen bucks.
“That didn’t hurt too much and it seemed reasonable enough. Five bucks came off the deuce you borrowed. That went back into Jake’s bankroll. This was Brian’s capital investment in the business, and a very good one, too, as long as there were pigeons like you dumb or desperate enough to pay six bucks to borrow five for a week.
At End of Day Page 5
