“So after a while, lookin’ back at it now, your basic unbiased observer, the fact that Jack’s job meant that Jack and Linda couldn’t spend much time together—that wasn’t the real problem anymore. The problem was that they had any time with each other anymore. It was such hard fuckin’ work.
“For the life of them both she could not seem to get it through her head that the rule was I was not supposed to tell her or anybody what I did when I was gone, where I went and who was with me. She was always after me. And when I did give in to her, allow myself to open up with her and tell her a little bit, not mentioning Denise, of course—it didn’t make her happy. All I could do was hope to Christ I didn’t talk in my sleep. Or do something, I’m screwing Linda, old times’ sake—not that I ever minded screwing, and besides, she did expect it—that I’d learned in bed with Denise.
“Well, it sounded to her like I was getting so I actually liked these cheap hoods, and thugs, and gangsters—which I did; they’re funny bastards, not always on purpose—and was getting more and more like them, the more time I spent with them. She could not understand that this was what I was supposed to be doing, putting my whole heart and soul into it. Not being her darling faithful husband, which of course I could assume she knew I still was, and always would be, but as a loyal, hard-working and talented special agent of the FBI.
“So that pretty much did it. We ended up getting divorced. We took the no-fault route, but she could’ve named either the Mob or the bureau co-respondent.
“Now your wife,” Farrier said. “What she’s got going for her, Lily—though of course she doesn’t know this, and there’s no way you can tell her, least that I would recommend—is that even with the Frogman and McKeach in your own house and eating dinner, you are nowhere near as exposed, nowhere near as closely tied up to the mob as I was, my days and nights, ’round the clock in Buffalo, being Soot Barillo. And therefore you’re nowhere near as close to even risking being compromised—much less killed, as I would’ve been they found me out—as I was then. And I came through it, no stain on me—being Soot, in the life.”
Stoat nodded, looking gloomy.
“Now, you said Frogman,” Farrier said. “Frogman especially bothers you, having him here in your house. You and Lily too?”
Stoat nodded, and drank some beer.
“Aw right,” Farrier said. He drank some beer. He set the glass down and folded his hands. He nodded and belched silently. “This’s the story, the Frogman. Why no matter what you do, you can’t find out much about him. Now don’t leave the room, go to the bathroom, sneak out for a smoke, if you still do that—this’s a very short story. Which shows you how smart the guy is.
“Nick Cistaro’s father was a stonecutter. He worked for all the cemetery-marker guys, the harps who made the gravestones out of good old Quincy granite. There used to be a flock of them around here, like one on every corner, but that was when I guess the only way they had to cart the stones around to the graveyards in various places was by horses pulling wagons. And they couldn’t go that far. So the companies that made the markers hadda be near the railroads, to bring the new stone in, and then not too far from the graveyards, where the finished markers went. Nowadays they got the trucks, big heavy trucks and cranes for lifting them on and off with, so distance isn’t a problem. But people still die—still hafta get buried, so there’s still a lotta monument companies around. Just not as many.
“When Nick was a boy, the Corrigans and Carrigans, Mulligans and Moriartys, they all called Guillermo Cistaro when they had a new name needed cutting, and he’d write them in his book with a little stubby pencil, and every week he’d make his rounds.
“This week he went to the places where they sold the new headstones, putting on the names of people were the first deaths in their families since they came into this country. Then the next week and week after, he’d go to the cemeteries, cutting new names into old stones, an’ the dates that went with them, under the old names that he probably’d cut into the stone years ago, when the stone was new.
“Now, you ask yourself, how can such a nice, hard-working, steady man have for a son a man like Nick, a gangster through and through? I have the answer for you. Guillermo never made much money. Nick wanted to make money. Lots and lots of money.
“He told me that himself, one night. We’re in the Friendly Ice Cream there, Washington Street in Brighton, it’s about seven-thirty and we met there for a sandwich. This isn’t that long after Fogarty retired. But we’ve known each other, Nick and I, a good year or two by then, so it’s not one of those jerk-off sessions when you spend most of your time sparring with each other, you know? Wasting everybody’s time. I’m the third FBI guy he’s had now for a contact, and we’re all pretty much the same—I am not that different. And after Buffalo and then workin’ with Fogarty here, it’s not like I still think a wise guy’s got hooves and a long tail, keeps a pitchfork in his car. We’ve both now long since reached the point where we can both relax and have a cheeseburger without shittin’ our pants.
“And he said something, not important, I forget now what it was, exactly, but the gist of it was that he’d passed this cemetery that day, two of them actually, both sides of the road.
“ ‘There I was,’ he says to me, ‘I’m just comin’ in from bein’ down on Route One in Norwood there, all mornin’, where I hadda see a guy, comin’ back LaGrange Street, West Roxbury, all right? Two cemeteries—Saint Joseph on the left and Mount Benedict on the right.
“ ‘I start thinkin’—all the days, and there was a lot of them, winter, summer, didn’t matter, that my father spent out here, kneelin’ onna buncha rags, sittin’ on his wooden toolbox. Rain comin’ down on him, year round, snow fallin’ on him inna winter, wearin’ gloves with no fingers in ’em so that he can hold the chisel—this was how he made his living.
“ ‘Well, I take care of my family. I take care of Assunta. I take care of our Regina. I take care her little sister, Angela, with the bright eyes, and I take care of her brother, Giacomo, and his little brother, Nicolo, him with the sad eyes, my father always said I was too serious, boy should have some fun, but Nicolo, with the sad eyes, and we have a happy life.
“ ‘Never heard the man complain. “Did he ever have a day like I am having now?” I think? “Where everybody’s after him, he can’t get nothin’ done?” No, I doubt it very much.’
“ ‘Well, sure,’ I say to him,” Farrier said. “ ‘Probably he didn’t. But you got a complicated life, and unless I am mistaken, you went and you made it for yourself. Did he drive out to those graveyards in a big black BMW sedan, climate control for heat on cold days, cool on hot days, for what’d cost an honest citizen ninety thousand dollars? Did he have to juggle time he spent with a stylish girlfriend and the time he spent with Assunta, so neither one of them felt neglected? And balance the money he spent on the two of them, neither one had her feelin’s hurt?’
“ ‘Well, no, he didn’t,’ Cistaro says to me, ‘but that’s the whole point of it, see? Why I did it. Why I can do those things. As hard’s my father worked, every fuckin’ day his life—get up inna morning, have some breakfast, coffee, always coffee, lots of coffee; make himself some sandwiches, big black Thermos full, more coffee; go to work with his toolbox, on the trolley, least when I was a kid; got his first Ford pick-up third or fourth hand, naturally. He was so proud. I remember that—I was eight. So then after that he drove, least made it a little better—though the truck cost money, too, it was always breakin’ down. Come home at night, exhausted, beat to shit; have some dinner, go to bed, rest up for another day—he never got nowhere.
“ ‘Watched him do it, day after day, I was growing up. Never makin’ any progress, never gettin’ anywhere, and I thought, “I dunno what I’m going to do, don’t know where I’m going to do it, but one thing I do know, I grow up, I’m gonna make a lot of money.”
“ ‘And everything I did since I was twelve years old or so, I did to keep that promise to myself. May’ve chang
ed my mind a lot of things, seen some people come and go, but the one thing stayed the same, and is never gonna change—no matter what I do, I will make a lot of money. Always have more than I need, and then even more behind that.
“ ‘Now I figure,’ he tells me,” Farrier said, “ ‘I sit down and I think about it, and the one thing that occurs to me right off when I start thinkin’, is, “Okay, if I’m gonna make the kind of money that I need, kind that I have got in mind, which is a lot of fuckin’ money, there’s no doubt that I’m gonna hafta do some things that aren’t gonna always be strictly by the book. I mean, I’m not gonna be a doctor; never gonna run a bank. No one’s comin’ up to me some fine day when the sun’s out, and sayin’ to me, ‘Well, don’t you look like a good smart kid—bet your momma’s proud of you. Here’s a couple good-sized oil wells, see what you can do with them.’ I’m gonna have to know how to take care of myself and then I’m gonna need somebody who can show me what to do.” ’
“The thing that people never seem to realize about these guys,” Farrier said, “is that the ones who really make a mark for themselves in the underworld, start from scratch, and rise up through the ranks until they get to the very top, or damn close to it, and then stay there, and stay alive, until the day that they retire, is that the ways they do it, strategy and tactics, ’re very similar to the ways that ambitious honest young guys make their marks in the legit business world. Or in the government. Gain position, they’re still young, any way they have to do it. Build on it as they get older. Make alliances and break them, and surround themselves with friends. I don’t think the Harvard B School has a Mafia professorship, and I doubt anyone who’s qualified’d be interested in an offer—couldn’t take the cut in pay, much less pay taxes on his earnings. But in the abstract there’s no reason why the chair could not exist; there’s sure enough case histories, lots of problems still to solve as these guys change with the times.
“First of all, Nick finished high school and did not wait for the draft. ‘You stayed in school because back then the diploma was your ticket to a good assignment.’ As I also knew, of course. ‘Then you enlisted, before they drafted you—got to pick your branch the service, the speciality you had in mind. So I did that.’
“What he did was navy, UDT—underwater demolition team. Became an expert in explosives. Also in commando tactics, sneaking in and creeping up on people, killing silently or making lots of noise and taking people by surprise so that by the time their friends reacted, he’d done what he came to do and gone away again. He was very good at it. Won himself two bronze stars and a fistful of citations. ‘Not an easy thing to do—medals meant something in those days—when the point of what you’re doing is to do it secretly, so that nobody finds out.’ Told me that himself. ‘That’s why I’m the Frogman, just in case you think I’m just a piece of shit who doesn’t love his country.’
“The second thing he did was make the decision he would never touch a thing that didn’t feel right to him. ‘I can’t tell you how it is that I know when something doesn’t. It may look perfectly okay to anybody else, but to me not a thing to do. But I know, I always know. I can’t tell you how many times I said No, and shied away from something that looked prime. Sometimes I’ve been wrong, and missed out on a lot of money. But that’s always been all right with me. My rule’s always been that if I dropped out on four sure things, and everyone went in on them made a whole shitload of money, and I also passed on one cake-walk where it then turned out that everyone who went in went to jail, I was smarter’n all the guys went in on the other four.
“ ‘You, you’re still new in this town,’ Nickie said to me. ‘You been here what? A year or two. In this town that’s like you just blew in yesterday. You been here a little while, five or ten years, say, like Al DeMarco was, and you find out what’s goin’ on, you will meet a lot of guys who’ll tell you all kinds of things about me. I done this and I done that; I done the other thing. Sayin’ that I killed guys, even, put them in the hospital? Well, let me tell you what to do, somebody tells you that. You say to them, “Now is that so? He sounds like a real bad bastard. How come I run him through the files, I don’t find nothin’ on him? J. Edgar’s record and the Frogman’s are identical. One of those guys at least is smart. You don’t think—both of them?” ’
“And then he looked at me and smiled,” Farrier said. He drank some of his beer and Stoat, now morose, drained his second glass.
“So, all right, that’s all he told me. Now the question is, what’s he done? That we know about, at least, even though we can’t prove it?
“When he came out of the service, he joined up with Hugo Botto. Hugo Bottalico of the South End, North Dorchester and Roxbury, parts of Rozzie and JP—before the blacks moved in.”
Stoat shrugged. “Means nothing to me,” he said.
“Didn’t to me, either,” Farrier said. “Fogarty filled me in.”
The door chimes played “Dixie” again.
11
“I’M STILL LEARNING HERE, OF COURSE,” Stoat said, addressing McKeach as he reached over Farrier’s right shoulder, first placing his knife and fork securely on his plate amid the chicken bones and tomato sauce, then lifting it deftly off the beige woven-reed place mat and placing it onto the pass-through counter next to McKeach’s. “Seems like I should be up to speed by now, I know, been up here two years in May, but you guys and your competition committed a lot of history around here before I came on the scene.”
He moved behind Cistaro and cleared his place, putting the knife and fork in his left hand and taking the plate in his right, bridging it across McKeach’s and Farrier’s plates. Then he put Cistaro’s utensils with his own on his plate and, turning, lifted it onto the counter next to the two empty bottles of Chianti Classico Riserva.
“You know, you’re pretty good at that,” Cistaro said, talking to Stoat’s back, tilting his chair and grinning mischievously at McKeach and Farrier. Farrier, lifting his glass, raised his right eyebrow. McKeach showed watchful disapproval.
“At what?” Stoat said, in the kitchen now, sponging the plates and loading them into the dishwasher, turning on the coffee maker.
“Waitin’ table,” Cistaro said. “Looked good with the wine too, openin’ an’ pourin’ that. Like you knew what you’re doin’—very smooth an’ professional. Anything ever goes wrong with your day job, too much crime on your shift or something, you could fall back on the restaurant business. Be glad to call Marv Scotti, put a good word in for yah.”
“Who’s Marv Scotti?” Stoat said. “Never heard of him. See, there’s another one I don’t know—you know who he is, Jack? Is he anyone I should’ve?”
“Sure,” Farrier said, looking at Cistaro as he elongated the word, surprised amusement on his face. “I know who he is. Been here as long as I have, get to know most of the players. But I wouldn’t say you should—be more concerned, you had. Wonder maybe you’d been waitin’ ’til after I go home nights; goin’ out by yourself without supervision, havin’ me along—hangin’ out with the wrong type of guys.”
“Hey,” Cistaro said, “what kind to talk is that, now, ‘wrong typah guys’? Marv Scotti’s an upfront guy, perfectly respectable businessman.”
“Okay,” Farrier said, “we’ll have it both ways—Marvy Marv’s a respectable businessman, just the kind that only comes out at night. Places he runs’re perfect for lunch after seein’ your parole officer; go for drinks and dinner after an exhaustin’ day takin’ the Fifth before the grand jury.”
“Well, nights’re when he works,” Cistaro said. “That’s when his clubs’re open.”
“ ‘Clubs,’ ” Farrier said.
“Yeah, clubs,” Cistaro said. “He must own at least a dozen bars and restaurants. They got entertainment? I would call them clubs.
“Pretty fancy places, too, Darren—get in lotsa the big tippers. Getcha night shift, one of those joints, all the moves that you’ve got, you’d do all right. Might do even better, in fact, you forgot about pa
yin’ taxes onna tips, ’n you do workin’ now for Uncle Sam.”
“Got too much mouth on you sometimes, Nick,” McKeach said, his eyes narrow and dead.
“Take it easy, Arthur,” Cistaro said, showing irritation. “I’m just havin’ some fun here.”
“Jeez, Nick, that many?” Farrier said, eyebrows raised and amusement on his face. “He’s got a dozen joints? I didn’t realize Marvy Marv had access to that much capital—you and he’d gotten that close.”
“Uh huh,” McKeach said; he nodded once, his eyes glowing anger.
“Well, you know,” Cistaro said. “Where he gets his money—that of course I wouldn’t know. But I get around, you know? And he’s the type of guy that also gets around—so I see him now and then. Tells me about various problems he’s been havin’, some guy he thinks maybe I can help him out with. But who backs him? I dunno. That I do not ask him, and I therefore couldn’t tell you.”
“Course you could,” Farrier said. “And now I know too. You been keepin’ things from me, Nick. I knew he had a piece, of course, the usual ten- or fifteen-point slice the owners give their managers, the guys who run the places. So they’ll be on the owners’ side and won’t let the rest of the help steal ’em blind. In maybe one or two—in the Terrace out on Soldier Field, Beacon Tap in Brookline sure, he probably had a bigger interest. But those aren’t what I’d call your fancy joints, exactly—and I had no idea, a dozen? You must really trust the guy. How long’ve you and Marv been runnin’?”
“Hey,” Cistaro said, “quit bustin’ my chops, all right, willya? I’m just trynah give my friend Darren here a hint, you know? Some the contacts that we got, things we could do for him, day ever came he could use a little help.”
“I could use some of that,” Stoat said, putting mugs on the pass-through counter. “That’s why, Jack, what I was asking you there, history of what happened here, ten and twenty years ago. Made things the way they are now.”
At End of Day Page 15
