Killers

by Howie Carr

  But if you don’t cap them on the way out, the feds immediately like ’em for the job, as well they should, and they start squeezing. Most of the crooked guards end up going straight into the Witness Security Program, and if that happens, you never see them again until they take the witness stand against you at trial.

  Cutting guards in on a job just isn’t worth the jeopardy when you can buy a few rounds of drinks and over the course of a few weeks the drivers themselves will spill every weakness in a route. It makes them feel like big shots. And after you’ve milked them dry, the guards who talked can’t even remember what they said because they were so loaded. A hundred bucks worth of beer for a quarter-million-dollar job. Talk about buying an orchard for an apple.

  Anyway, I had this guy in as my straw owner of the Alibi. Everything was fine until the guy decided he wanted to graduate from half-assed wiseguy to full-fledged wiseguy. I hate it when that happens. He began selling coke out of the bar. I let it slide until he started dealing keys. Then I thought he owed me a visit at the garage. He had to come clean and come with cash, and he came with neither. First he played Mickey the Dunce, and when I called him on that, he tried to stare me down. He was acting like he owned the joint.

  Soon thereafter, one night after closing, a couple of guys wearing masks came in and ripped off five keys and $50,000 cash. They were my guys, of course.

  I got a call from him the next day. He was wondering what had happened to his protection. I told him I was wondering what had happened to my end.

  By then he was into the coke himself, and he decided to go along on one of the armored-car robberies. The cops were waiting for them. I just can’t afford to have partners who are looking at heavy time, especially if they’ve never done time before. They found his body in the trunk of a rented car in the long-term parking lot at Logan Airport—two in the hat, as the old-timers say.

  The Alibi’s current owner of record is the wife of my older brother, who’s been doing odd jobs for me, all legit, since he went into AA a few years back. He’s the manager of record. He has a gun permit too. I see ’em twice a year, every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Their kids love me. Like Whitey used to say, Christmas is for cops and kids.

  This day I made it into the Alibi around 3:00 p.m., after parking the Escalade in the back alley. I had business to conduct, so I went out onto the sidewalk to speak with everybody as they stopped by. A guy with a hijacking crew from Malden mentioned something about a load of flat-screen TVs; I told him to see my guy at a warehouse I lease in Everett. I never say anything incriminating, or at least I try as best I can not to. I always talk one-on-one, his word against mine, but just in case he’s wearing a wire, everything is indirect. Nobody’s name is ever mentioned. Out on the street I cup my mouth, like Cheech or an NFL coach on the sidelines, just in case the cops have got some lip-readers working with binoculars across Broadway.

  The feds follow me everywhere, at least when they’ve got a hair across their ass. As a felon, I can’t carry a gun in the car. A lot of the time I have a car that follows me, with two guys with clean records. They have the guns. I only drive the Escalade in times of emergency, like now.

  I was basking in the early spring sunshine outside the Alibi when one of the local bookies showed up. I’d asked him to come by when he had some time. I never order anybody to do anything. But most times, the people I need to see do the right thing. This guy’s name was Barry Weinstein and he operated out of an “insurance agency” on Broad Street in the financial district. He’d stopped paying “rent” to Sally, which was a mistake, because Sally asked me to speak to Barry for him. Sally didn’t like Jews very much, and he was always worried he’d lose his temper and slap them around, or worse.

  The way something like this works is, whatever I collect from one of Sally’s guys, we split, fifty/fifty. Barry was about seventy, another guy shaped like a bowling ball, maybe five-five. I was leaning against a lamppost on Broadway when he showed up.

  “Thanks for coming over, Barry,” I said. “Like I told you, I need to borrow some money.”

  “You, Bench? You got more money than God. Banks’d lend to Bench McCarthy.”

  “God’s tapped out too, Barry. I’m a little strapped. You read about that thing over at Logan Airport.” The feds had grabbed fifty kilos of cocaine. I had nothing to do with that load, but it had been in the papers and on TV. He’d remember it. “That was my load. I need a new stake to get back on my feet.”

  Barry was skeptical. “What about Sally, he can’t help?”

  “Sally? C’mon, you know Sally, he tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers.”

  That much was true. When we first partnered up, Sally told me he’d drive the car for me if I needed to whack somebody. The only thing he told me never to ask him for was a loan. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” that was his philosophy, but not quite in those words. He wasn’t much into Hamlet.

  “No offense, Bench,” Barry said, “but how do you pay me back?”

  “How do I pay you back?” I said. “What kind of question is that?”

  “Again, with all due respect, it’s the kind of question that follows after Barry asks himself the first question, which is, why does a guy like Bench need to see Barry Weinstein?”

  I find it irritating when somebody speaks of himself in the third person.

  “Look, I been watchin’ you, Barry. I’ll be honest, Sally tells me you’ve gotten a little behind. That puts you in play. If you ain’t with Sally, you’re with me, and I need somebody I can send people to who get a little behind. You know how skittish some people get when they’re in arrears to somebody like Sally. They’re worried something bad might happen to them.”

  His nostrils flared in anger, and I could see that Barry had also gotten behind on trimming his nose hairs.

  “Are you threatening me?” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said. “Forget I even mentioned it. You don’t have to do nothing for me. But just remember that next time you get in a jam and somebody comes looking for you, you ain’t gonna have me watching your back. Or Sally either.”

  “You’re saying I need a shoulder to cry on?”

  “Everybody needs a shoulder to cry on, Barry.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right, I do need a shoulder to cry on. I got this guy, he’s always been good for the money, never a bit of trouble, but now he’s behind, forty large. Says he won’t pay. Got a new wife, she tells him he don’t have to pay.”

  “Well?” I said.

  “I need somebody to put the fear of God into him,” Barry said. “I know Sally wants his money from me, but how can I get Sally what I owe him if this other guy won’t pay what he owes me?”

  I recognized a guy in a car headed down Broadway. He honked the horn and I waved back. It gave me time to think how to let Barry down gently.

  “Barry,” I said, “I thought we had a deal, you and me and Sally.”

  “We do, Bench, we do have a deal.”

  “And what’s your understanding of that deal?”

  “I could have gone with you or Sally, but I picked Sally, ’cause I know him longer, but once I made my choice, he told me, I’m not supposed to ask him for any help collecting from deadbeats. Or you either, that goes without saying, I suppose.”

  “And yet here you are doing just that,” I said.

  “Well, yes, I guess I am,” Barry said.

  “And why is that, Barry?” It was strange, addressing a guy old enough to be my father as if he were some wayward kid. “Why did Sally tell you he doesn’t threaten anybody with any strong-arm stuff anymore?”

  “Because, he said, whenever a wiseguy threatens a civilian nowadays, the bum goes running to the FBI.”

  “Correct,” I said. “This guy who owes you forty, if I go to him, he’s going to agree to pay me, only the next time I see him, he’ll be wearing a wire. More’n likely the feds’ll be rolling videotape too. The best possible scenario is I get arrested and have to pa
y a lawyer at least forty large to get myself a continued without a finding. The worst possible scenario is I go to prison for attempted extortion. You wouldn’t want to see your good friend Bench go to prison for attempted extortion, now would you, Barry?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  I was getting tired of talking to Barry.

  “Barry, do you understand the kind of relationship guys like me and Sally have with guys like Barry Weinstein?”

  “I don’t follow you, Bench.”

  “Maybe you can follow this then. What’s ours is ours, and what’s yours is ours. Do you understand now, Barry?”

  He looked worried, but standing out on Broadway, he was restraining the urge to run away. I was staring at him now, putting on my best mean face. I’ve been told I have a pretty good mean face.

  “Barry, here’s the deal. You owe Sally forty large. I’m his collection agent. And since you’ve been pissing me off here, I’m going to fine you another ten grand, which means you owe me fifty thousand.”

  “Fine me?” he said. “I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Then you’re not going to pay me?”

  “I didn’t say that, Bench.”

  “Because if you don’t, Barry, I am going to kill you.”

  “Hey, Bench, you know what? I think we got a deal here.”

  * * *

  The problem with bookmaking is that you eventually become a loan shark. It’s the nature of the racket. You’re dealing with degenerate gamblers, and they’re always broke. So you lend them money. If you don’t, they’ll find another bookie who will. Then they run up a tab with that guy until he finally cuts them off and then they just run to another bookie.

  This wouldn’t be such a headache except that very few bookies are muscle guys. They’re the kind of guys who got their lunch bags stomped on in high school. They got pocket protectors in their stockings for Christmas. They can’t collect what they’re owed.

  Now they’re hanging out with gangsters, or so they think, and they lap it up. They start dropping your name to their marks to impress them. But the deadbeats are their problem, not mine. I protect bookies from other wiseguys, not from their own piss-poor choice of customers. But they never stop asking, which is why I now have a guy who sits in a booth at the new A&A Deli on Com Ave in Brookline handling the Jewish bookies. He settles up with them every Monday. We have his booth swept for bugs once a week, every Monday morning, by the Brookline cops. We always use local talent, that way there’s never any hard feelings. My guy is of course Jewish himself, from Brookline, like most of the Jewish bookies now, except for a handful who still operate out of the bars on Fifth Street in Chelsea. Those guys may be the last Jews in Chelsea; the Young Men’s Hebrew Association under the Tobin Bridge is now an Iglesia de Dios.

  I have another guy in Cambridge who handles the bookies from North Cambridge. He’s Irish. So’s the guy in Quincy. Sally has the Italian districts, or what used to be the Italian districts, before the Brazilians and the Guatemalans moved in.

  We charge ’em on a monthly basis, for “protection.” I’m not their layoff guy, I’m not their partner, I’m the taxman. I take my end, and I get it first. Win or lose, they pay. If Sally wants to be in business with them, handle their layoffs, that’s his call.

  After Barry left I wanted to sit down with the guys who ran my poker game in Andrew Square, Salt and Peppa. Salt was tight with Peppa because he came out of one of the last white families to move out of the Orchard Park projects in Roxbury. They were both capable. After I heard about Sally’s nephew, I had asked them to stop by. We went inside the Alibi and sat down in a booth in the back, near the jukebox. I put a few quarters in and punched some random buttons, to create a little ambient sound just in case.

  “Gotta be even more careful than usual,” I told Salt, who ran the crew. There’s always gotta be a boss, even if it’s only two guys working.

  “You don’t think maybe we ought to shut down for a few days?” Peppa asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “That would send the wrong message, that they’re in our heads.” I thought for a moment. “Notice anything out of the ordinary lately?”

  Salt answered. “Few more cop cars lately, wouldn’t you say, Pep?”

  “Yeah,” Peppa said. “Even before Sally’s kid got killed. Kinda weird, almost like the cops knew something beforehand.”

  I stared at Peppa. “I wish you’d told me this before now.”

  Salt answered for him. “You don’t spend much time in Southie, Bench, not that I blame you. Them cops got more freedom from headquarters than most of the other districts. Probably because of all the politicians livin’ over there.”

  I asked, “You’re takin’ care of our friends every month, aren’t you?”

  “Couldn’t operate no other way,” Salt said.

  “Okay, just don’t let anybody catch you flat-footed. It’s our turn to get hit one of these nights.”

  “We watchin’,” Peppa said. “I got two of my boys in a car across Dorchester Street from the game, in case anybody comes outta there fast.”

  “What about guns?”

  “Got another car behind them, with some good solid citizens in it, white citizens, guys with permits, you dig?”

  You dig? Sometimes I couldn’t figure out if Peppa was putting me on with that seventies Superfly dialogue, or if he was serious. Maybe I should start calling him “Jim,” like the Mafia guys with Richard Roundtree in Shaft.

  “If I was checking us out for a heist,” Peppa continued, “I’d be giving us a wide fuckin’ berth. Too many eyes, too many guns.”

  That’s what I had figured. I just wanted to make sure they weren’t getting lazy.

  They got up and after we shook hands, I noticed the guy standing in the front door of the Alibi, mid-forties. He looked a little like an undercover cop, except he wasn’t dressed as well.

  But I didn’t make this guy for a cop. Any cop I knew—that is, paid—would just walk over. And if this were an official inquiry, he wouldn’t hesitate, and he wouldn’t be by himself. He was scanning the room, so I knew he could only be looking for me. He made me but was smart enough to walk over to the bar and sit down. I called to my manager, Hobart, who was wearing an old-fashioned butcher’s apron. He walked over to my table and leaned in, close to my face.

  “See that guy over there at the bar,” I said. “You recognize him?”

  Hobart slowly looked around, then turned back. “Never seen him before.”

  “He looks familiar. But he ain’t Somerville. I’d remember him if he was local. Must be from Boston.”

  Hobart smiled. “Maybe he’s another one of those guys, read about you in the paper and now he wants to get rid of his wife and he figures you’ll do a hit on the arm for him.”

  It’s happened before, more than once. This guy, though, didn’t have that furtive, beaten, henpecked look. He also didn’t look like he had $10,000 cash in his coat pocket, which was what the last guy had who asked me to kill his wife. I told him, let me give you some free advice pal, you want a hit man, just go down to your nearest State Police barracks and turn yourself in, ’cause they’re the only ones you’re gonna find in a bar who are willing to take a contract from somebody they don’t know. I always tell the poor bastards the same thing: it’s cheaper to keep her.

  Hobart said, “You want me to tell him to screw?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Let him make his play. Sometimes I think I don’t talk to enough people anymore.”

  “Sometimes I think you talk to too many,” Hobart said. He was referring to Peppa. That was something he and Sally shared in common. Neither of them liked blacks. I’d tried to explain to Hobart that these days it was good to have a few blacks around. Somebody wants to cap me, maybe he’ll think twice, wondering if he wants to have to worry for the rest of his life if every black guy he sees coming at him on the street is one of Bench’s guys. You’ve got to look for every edge you can.

  To which Hobart always replie
s, “You can’t fix Negro.”

  I halfheartedly read the Herald for a while, but the guy just sat there at the bar, sneaking an occasional look over at me. I got tired of the Herald and had started in on the New York Post when the guy made his move. He took a last swig of his beer, then got up and began slowly walking toward me. Every eye in the place was on him. Hobart, at the next table, reached into his apron pocket, just in case. The guy didn’t look like trouble, at least not gun trouble, but you never know. He reached the table and stood in front of me.

  “Hi, Bench,” he said. “You may not remember me—”

  “I don’t.”

  “My name’s Jack Reilly, I used to be a cop in Boston, worked for the mayor—”

  Now I remembered him. He was a bagman. He used to come around to my place on Columbus Avenue, Dapper’s, before I burned it down. Then he started showing up at the garage. I paid City Hall a grand a month, which didn’t include the district cops and the building and zoning inspectors. Reilly was a cop, which was why whenever I duked him the grand, I always wondered how much of it actually ended up in the mayor’s pocket—$700 or $300? You give something to a cop, he thinks it’s all for him. That’s just the way it is. I don’t know who I’d use for a bagman if I needed one, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be a cop.

  I looked up at Reilly. He was waiting for me to offer him a chair. He’d be waiting for a while longer.

  “Yeah, sure, I know you,” I said. “Didn’t I read something about you, Jack? Something about a wire?”

  “The feds got me picking up a donation from another cop—”

  “Cash?” I asked.

  “Of course, that’s why I was the one making the pickup. He wanted a promotion, that’s what he said. That’s what the feds told him to say. They wanted to flip me to go up against the mayor, but I stood up.”

  “Do any time?”

  He shook his head. “I got nolle prossed. I had a good lawyer.”

  “It’s easy to stand up if you’re not looking at time, you know what I mean, Jack?”