“But I’m still young, then. I don’t have sense enough, be satisfied with that, this nice quiet living that I’m making, more money’n I can spend. Not that I ever went in that much for livin’ high and so forth, but I am ambitious and I’m runnin’ late.”
He smiled tightly. “And after I’ve made money, I like to keep my money—see if I can make some more. I’ve always been the type of guy who no matter what he’s had goin’ on’s always liked to have a little something else, you know? A little something of my own, goin’ on the side.”
His expression was calm, his tone the patient monotone, varied by occasional emphasis, that an earnest instructor would use addressing interested novices. “Now like I said, Brian G. was a good guy. He didn’t mind guys thinkin’ this way.” He glanced around the table much as such a teacher would, making sure of comprehension. Cistaro was amused. Farrier was alert. Stoat’s eyes were bleary; his mouth was partly open.
“Darren, hey,” McKeach said, reaching out with his left hand to shake Stoat’s right forearm. “You still with me now, on this? You’re the one, asked me explain—don’t want you sleepin’ on me here.”
Stoat shook his head a little and opened his eyes fully. He moistened his lips. “No, no,” he said, “wide awake. Don’t you worry ’bout that.”
“Well, all right, then,” McKeach said, drawing his hand back. He picked up his teaspoon and toyed with it, fixing his gaze on the table, studying memory. “Brian G. was unusual. A lotta guys, the LCN guys, for example, they had a tradition. Old dagos called it ‘wetting the beaks.’ Younger guys—‘Havin’ a taste.’ And they didn’t mean, ‘Let’s you and me go have a drink.’
“The deal was that when you made a lot of money, more money’n you needed, and you wanted it to go to work—well, you know, you put it on the street. So it was makin’ more for you without you thinkin’ about it. And you could then concentrate on doin’ what you’d been doin’ before, to make it all inna first place—so that you made even more. Well, fine by them if you did that, but you hadda do it with them. You wanted to make money off the money you’d made workin’ for them? You had to let them make money off it too.
“That was their rule, no exceptions. LCN guys always hadda get a piece of your investments. ‘It’s just a little piece,’ they’d tell you, ‘just the normal five percent. Not a very high price, the protection that we give.’
“Which it wasn’t, a high price, for an outside guy doin’ business with them. But you were the protection, the guy who went around to outside guys, if they either didn’t pay for workin’ their piece of the territory or butted in on some other guy’s protected turf. Your boss called you in and he told you about this, either him not gettin’ paid or guys not followin’ the rules, and so then”—without altering his calm expression and even tone—“you went to them and said, ‘Hey, you want your ears cut off, an’ have me stick ’em in your mouth? And then I cut your dick off and use it to then ram ’em down your throat? That what you want, asshole?’ ”
Stoat’s eyes were very wide now; his lower lip was slack.
“Which of course you probably couldn’t actually do, because when you cut the dick off, it probably wouldn’t be hard. Most likely be soft, you been talking to the owner like that.” He chuckled. “Fact you probably would’ve hadda feel around in his pants for it, all shrunken up ’n’ hiding, you decided, cut it off. But the point is that you doin’ this, you were the protection, the insurance—it was you.”
Stoat gaped. Farrier stirred uneasily in his chair. McKeach looked up at him inquiringly. “No, nothing,” Farrier said, fluttering the fingers of his right hand. “Go right ahead, what you’re saying.”
McKeach nodded and looked down again at the spoon. Farrier caught Stoat’s horrified eyes, and with his own gaze and a slight movement of his head warned him to alter his expression. Stoat shook himself again and resettled in his chair.
“Anna reason that it worked,” McKeach said, “was because people knew that if some guy pissed the boss off, he would tell you to go around and see him and do something like that to him—and that you would do it. The people he did business with knew this.
“That was the kind of thing I did, when I worked for Brian G. And since I’ve been working for myself, for me, when I hadda. So the people Brian G. did business with generally did what they were supposed to do, and the people I do business with, the same kind of thing. For me. So as a result Brian didn’t hafta say it very often, and I didn’t have to do it—very often.” He smiled. “Things change, but not too much.”
Farrier managed a small smile. Stoat, plainly alarmed, glanced at Cistaro. Cistaro shrugged and smiled. “What?” McKeach said, looking at Stoat. “You didn’t know this? That’s the way it works. That’s the way it’s always worked. You’re me and you are in the kind of business that we do, some guy owes you major money, say a couple hundred grand, or the same amount in something else that he was bringin’ in for you, and then the first thing that you know, the silly bastard goes and tries to fuck you over. What the fuck you gonna do? Gonna go to court and sue him?”
McKeach’s laugh was short and harsh. “No, you can’t do that. He knows you can’t do that. So, you would go and see him. Or you would send a guy like me or Nick to see him, and one of us, whichever one, would say something like that to him, about his fuckin’ ears and so on. Meaning every word. And then you would say, ‘Now you tell me, this’s what you want me to do?’ And then they generally paid.”
Now McKeach smiled. “Of course when they didn’t, when they made you make a point—it happens now and then, someone hasta try you out. Well, then, as much as you might not wantah, you hadda do something. Cut off one ear, maybe, like I heard somebody did with that asshole high-roller broker who lived down there in Cohasset—what the hell was his name there? McGillavray? Couldn’t seem to see his way clear, pay that one-thirty-seven marker he built up when the stock market kept on not doin’ what he thought it was gonna do? Said he didn’t have the money. Too bad, but hey, maybe sometimes it’s the truth—the guy really can’t pay.
“Well, you hate to see it when that happens, but you have to make him see that if he doesn’t pay, he’s gonna get hurt. Some people don’t believe you when you tell them that. They think when someone gets hurt, it was an accident. A car crash; they tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Not: someone else hurt them on purpose. So when some guy tries to give you some shit instead of money—‘I know I oughta pay, and if I had the dough I would; I just don’t have any now’—you have to make him see.
“So, do that to him. Let him walk around with that a while, go to work with one ear missin’. Explain it to everybody—‘I was shaving, see? Use an old-fashioned straightedge razor, have to strop it every day. Genuine Rolls—my wife bought it in London for me, gave it to me Christmas. Really a beautiful thing, but you got to be careful with it. I wasn’t. My hand slips. And as you see, I cut myself a little. It’s nothin’ really serious. Doc says in a month or two it’ll grow back, good as new.’ ” McKeach paused, again, inviting laughter.
Stoat looked stricken. Neither Farrier, avoiding his eyes, nor Cistaro, keeping his eyes on McKeach, said anything.
“Right,” McKeach said, shaking his head. “Jesus, I don’t know.” He laughed. “Okay,” he said, “let’s say it didn’t actually happen quite the way I told it. I don’t think he really did that—went to work with a bandage on his head an’ tried to explain it. That was a fantasy I had there, benefit of all you guys. Like the old TV show? Fantasy Island? Midget inna black tuxedo’d come runnin’ to the big tall handsome guy, white suit—‘Da prane, boss, da prane’? I was just sayin’ how it prolly would’ve been, if he had gone to the office. That make you feel better?”
None of the others said anything. McKeach looked defiant. “Look, even havin’ to stay home, asshole found the money to pay us. Even found some more money, someone built him a new ear. But the word still got around, no doubt about it. The week after that, in this town, quite a
long time after that, everybody paid on time. Nobody was late.” He smiled. “And that’s why that kind of thing hasta happen sometimes—’cause it works. Reminds people—makes ’em believe again.”
Farrier snickered and gave Stoat a stern look. Stoat forced a chuckle. Cistaro looked at each of them and nodded, then looked back at McKeach, and with his face expressionless slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook his head once. He said, “That should do it, Arthur.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said, clearing his throat. “Well, anyway, the point is that anything you did, you went with them, the LCN, you always hadda do it so you stayed dependent on them. So they knew every dime you made, how you made it, and who off of, and could see if it looked like you might be building up a war chest of your own—might have some plans in mind. So they could then head you off. And that was what I didn’t like, them ever getting bigger in this town.
“Brian G. couldn’t see that—the LCN guys were a threat. Because he wasn’t like that. But I saw if they got a foothold, they’d take Brian out. Make us all work by their rules. Brian had the attitude that if you were hooked up with him, then that meant you were with him. Just like if you were hooked up, then he was with you. And he was not gonna assume you must be cookin’ something up against him if in addition to the things that the two of you had goin’, that you had with him, you also had a few things goin’ belonged strictly to you. Like he had a few things goin’ that belonged strictly to him.
“I myself personally back around the time when all the trouble first began around here, you had people gettin’ shot and goin’ down—everybody wonderin’ the hell was goin’ on—I had quite a bit of money by then onna street. Plus which I was still makin’ more, myself, still workin’ for Brian, doing what I’d always done. So I had something to lose.
“I was not the only one. Before the shooting started, guys all over town’re doing good. Everybody makin’ money, and nobody gettin’ hurt? You had Hugo Botto, Hugo Bottalico; he had his business runnin’ good, his part of town. You guys’ll have to ask Nick about how that was, if that’s what you want to know, and I’ll stop talkin’ while he tells you. Because he was with Hugo then about the same way that I was with Brian G.”
McKeach paused, an expression of inquiry on his face. Farrier and Stoat looked at Cistaro. Cistaro shook his head and said “No” in a soft, clogged voice, then cleared his throat and said firmly to McKeach, “No, no, you’re doing fine. You were much higher up with Brian’n I was with Hugo anyhow, know much more about it. How it went, up at that level.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said, gazing at him and frowning. “Well, keep that in mind here now, my friend, all of this’s your idea. Tellin’ everything.”
“Darren’s ever gonna help us,” Cistaro said, “he’s gotta know this shit.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said, “right.” He turned to Stoat. “The basic thing you had was Hugo Botto and Nick here, and a couple other guys—they had Somerville and north of Boston. Maiden, Medford, Everett. East of Route One, along the beach—Lynn, Revere, Saugus, and the North End—mostly LCN.
“Botto’s organization was a little bigger’n ours, by which I don’t mean that he had all that many more guys in it, but it was so spread out, a lot more ground to cover, and so he hadda have more’n just the one guy, like Brian G. had me, workin’ under him—to watch over all the other guys he had workin’ under him. And Nick was one of his. But except for size, Hugo and Nick and two more guys operated Hugo’s business in the parts of town he had just about the same as Brian G. and me did in the part of town we had, and there wasn’t any trouble.
“Before the shooting started, only problem me and Brian G. had was the one you always had; it never went away. One or two guys, maybe more, but never more’n three or four, you thought were workin’ for you, with you; they would get together and decide they could run it all much better, and keep all of what came in, if they split off and took the part of your turf you had them working in.
“Say, the financial district—sports bookin’, loan-sharkin’, some fencin’—hot jewelry for the hotshots’ girlfriends. Rich territory. Now it’s gonna be theirs—no cut for you. And they can make it even richer, doin’ things you wouldn’t let them do—like getting on the import end of bringing coke and grass in, dealin’ in that shit. Which we never have allowed—still don’t to this day.
“So I don’t mean that the shootings came as a surprise. Sometimes it has to happen. But when guys started disappearing, and we didn’t know the reason, or where the hell they went—few days later one of them’d turn up with a couple in the head—that was when we started to worry.
“Not always, now; sometimes when someone disappeared—guys would do that all the time, get to fucking someone else’s broad, or someone else’s wife, then hear the guy involved found out? And he wasn’t happy, he’d been asking around for them, sit down and have a chat. Guys in that position often would decide the best thing to do was get out of town a while. So that could be a reason why a guy would disappear.
“Or maybe someone they knew dropped outta sight, and it’d go around he might’ve made some kind of a deal with cops, and he knew a lot of things that would make some people nervouss—so he would disappear. Like guys do now when the talk onna street is the reason why you haven’t seen someone a while was because he took Witness Protection. They didn’t call it a ‘program’ back then, but the cops could do the same kind of thing.” He looked sad.
“But back when I’m now talking about, with Brian and Hugo still in charge, when the guys started turning up dead, one by one? After the first one or two then you knew this wasn’t some pissin’ contest over a bum check that got outta hand, a beef about a loan that went south, or a fight two guys’re havin’ about a woman. This’s now gonna be war.”
He looked worried. “The first three or four guys—no one much cared about them. If they were dead then they were dead, and that’s too bad, hard on their families, but the fuck, who’s gonna miss ’em? Must’ve pissed somebody off. Can’t go to war about fights over women and fights over money and somebody called someone out from a barroom—those things’ve had nothin’ at all to do with business.
“But then the big guys get involved in private fights, one of them floats in onna tide? Reason don’t matter—if he’s big then his guys’re involved, they don’t have no choice. It’s then a matter of honor. And besides, if the guys who aren’t dead, if they expect to keep what they’ve got, well then, they’d better get involved too. Show some respect for their guy who is dead, and retaliate, right? Because otherwise the guys who did him’ll come around and do them, take over his whole territory. So—never mind why he got dead, he is dead—revenge is their duty to him, and themselves, to show they’re still men, who don’t stand for that shit to happen.
“So, I forget the order now, things happened in. I think two or three guys’d gone down, but only a couple, and no one knows what’s going on. And then someone took out Brian G. A clear setup job, ’hind the old Boston Arena. Obviously someone’d called him on the quiet, ‘Okay, let’s have a meet, see what we do about this.’ Really hush-hush—he didn’t tell me about it, no one but Danny, kid he had drive him. Who also got hit, of course, but not fatal—he got better, I gave him a job. And where was I at the time? I was out gettin’ laid—which I would’ve put off and gone with him, not that I would’ve liked the sound of it; would’ve tried to talk him out of it first. But he didn’t tell me about it. Anyway, that took care of any doubt anyone may’ve had—if Brian was dead, it was war.
“After that things started happening fast. Rocco Monti went down two nights after Brian. Brother Bernie, heir apparent, all right? He thinks, little shit: alone with the cops he’s a fist fullah butter, but now with, he thinks, Brian’s guys behind him, now he’s just fulla courage. Doesn’t dare come to me, ask me do something for him, obvious reason. So he hired the guys that did Rocco, and naturally one of them, Sean McGary, shot off his mouth—so he’s the next one to go.
“Then B
ernie hires Mickey to work full time for us, Mickey Hunter, and that was one mammoth mistake—Mickey loved to shoot people; he’d shoot anyone. And then he’d tell anyone who’d listen all about it. Or anything else that he did. With Mickey, nothing he did ever was finished ’til he told a lot of people. So it got around fast he now had steady work, and someone said ‘No, we can’t take this,’ and went and took Mickey out.
“Word about that got around, and pretty soon the rumor was, ‘The talent’s from Federal Hill—Providence.’ Which of course meant the Mafia.
“Everyone believed it. It felt so right, they wanted to. Explained so many things—guys going down for no reason anybody knew—could their friends be doing this? No one wanted to believe that. So, the Mafia—of course.
“It’s right about now that Al shows up again. This’s when he makes his pitch. That’s another thing he had—he had timing. He not only confirms the Mafia rumor, and gives me the obvious reason, I already thought of myself—he tells me what’s gonna come next—and this’s what gets my attention.
“Smarten up, kiddo—they’re already here. Groundwork was laid months ago. Now all they’re doing’s expanding. You guys started shooting each other last year? They decided, ‘Boston can be had.’ So they put in what amounted to a new outpost or two, tested you out for a while. And sure enough, you showed ’em you’re ready for the plucking—so busy clippin’ each other, you didn’t even notice them. They’d thought Boston was ripe, and it was. Pretty soon, you won’t have the manpower to fight them.
“ ‘They think they can come in here now and set up an office, take over what you guys’ve built up. What Brian G. had and what Hugo has got, but won’t have now for much longer—he’ll be the next one into the trunk; only question now’s which night and which Caddy. And then after Hugo they’ll take out the Frogman—the same time they come after you. If you two guys don’t do them the favor, which they think you might, of killing each other off first.
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