by Howie Carr
I knew she must have heard the “pssst” when I popped the top. But she let it slide. For someone whose father ate lunch every afternoon at the Somerset Club, she was very pragmatic, especially when she needed information.
She said, “Can’t we get along, Jack? Some men, they even go on vacations with their ex-wives. You haven’t talked to yours in ten years, and now you barely even talk to me, and all we were was—”
“I wasn’t the kind of guy you could bring to a Globe party, was I? That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? I helped you get over there, but once you were there, I didn’t fit. White. Irish. Catholic. Heterosexual. From Boston. Want me to think of some more reasons you had to drop me?”
I heard a deep sigh on the other end of the line.
“I’ve told you a million times, they don’t care if you’re Irish. They really don’t. You’ve got this ancient James Michael Curley chip on your shoulder about something nobody else cares about anymore. The fact that I went over to the Globe had nothing to do with…” Her voice trailed off again.
I thought about asking her how she was getting along with her new boyfriend, who had a trust fund, used “summer” as a verb, had a family “cottage” on Nantucket, a Yale degree and a closet full of bow ties that he wore to his job as metro editor, whatever that meant. I was pretty sure he’d never covered a fire, let alone set one. Metro editor—did that mean he was a metrosexual too? But the Vicodin had kicked in. I was more comfortably numb by the moment.
“What do you want, Katy? Go ahead, ask.” Then she could go back to her boyfriend and tell him how she’d just been talking to one of her lowlife sources, whom she couldn’t name of course, to maintain an air of mystery about her extraordinary talent for enduring the foul breath of the plebeians while hobnobbing with those beneath her on the socioeconomic totem pole.
“I’m just wondering if there’s a gang war about to break out,” she said. “What do you hear? Is Bench making a move against the Italians?”
“How would I know?” I asked her. “You know me, I’m just a dirty cop with a phony disability pension.”
“So what were you doing at the Alibi this afternoon?” She’d always been able to surprise me, and now she’d done it again.
“The Alibi? Isn’t that Bench’s place over on Winter Hill?”
“Yeah, and you were there. We had the place staked out, wanted a shot of Bench. I’m right now looking at a photo of you walking in. You didn’t even pull the collar on your coat up around your neck. What were you doing there?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I had a thirst so great it would cast a shadow?”
“Yes, I would, considering how well I know you. But I also remember you don’t much like hanging around wiseguys, so I’m guessing there had to be some money on the table for you to make the drive over to Somerville.”
“You got me,” I said. “There was money involved.” I said no more.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what? As you pointed out, we’re not married, never have been. Ain’t no spousal privilege here. I just don’t like my business bein’ spread all over the street.”
“Did you talk to him, Bench I mean?”
“I would ask, are we off the record, but I know the answer to that is always no, no matter what you say.”
“Spare me the lectures on journalism ethics. Just answer the question. Did you talk to him?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I talked to him, and he … well, he answered. In a manner of speaking.”
“And the subject of the conversation?”
“I walked in, and he was behind the bar, and I looked over the draft selections, and then I said, ‘I’ll have a Harpoon IPA,’ and he drew one for me, and I said, ‘Much obliged, pardner,’ and he said, ‘That’ll be four bucks.’”
There was a pause on the other end, and then she said, “Very funny. I guess you want your name and picture in the paper tomorrow as having visited the Alibi.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t do that, but you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.”
It went on like that for a while. I was trying to think if she could do any legwork for me, but right now I couldn’t think of anything. I finally told I’d see her around the campus and hung up.
7
DITTO’S DILEMMA
I own a commercial building off Warren Street in Roxbury, bought it cheap off an old-line wiseguy who was retiring and moving to Florida. There was a $12,000 lien on it for unpaid city taxes, and $3,500 in overdue water and sewerage bills, all of which I paid, and the guy threw in three silencers to sweeten the pot. The price was $5,000. Setting up the real estate trust that owns it, since I can’t very well have it in my own name, cost me another $1,500.
The old-timer ran a half-ass garage out of there, and the word is that during the Irish gang wars, he’d settled up a few scores there, with acetylene torches and the like. That was before my time. But I kept the garage going, with the old mechanic, a guy named Rocco. He was used to having the element around, and we do a steady business. A lot of our work is insurance—we don’t fix the cars, we wreck ’em. I used to run that racket on consignment—if you got $5,000 in claims, I’d take ten percent, $500. But I was working with too many cops, and you just can’t trust them guys on insurance fraud any more than you can trust ’em on anything else.
Now I charge a flat rate. Five hundred bucks. Getting the accident report is up to them. If they need an appraiser, I’ll provide one for them. That’s another $500, which I whack up with the appraiser. If that seems high to you, you haven’t been to a new-car showroom lately. Think sticker shock.
But the garage is short money. What I like is having a place in the city. It’s not what you’d call prime real estate, obviously, but I’m not in it to turn a quick buck. It’s a half-acre, a good-sized lot in Roxbury. There’s always been a four-foot-high brick wall around the lot, and up above that I’ve got eight feet of barbed wire with razors all around the top. You’d have to be an Olympic pole vaulter to get in. I used to have dogs patrolling the property, pit bulls, rottweilers, etc., but the locals shot them for sport through the front gate.
Now I have two new ones, Tyson and Atomic Dog. Neighborhood names for neighborhood dogs. I keep them inside nights. Rocco cleans up their shit every morning when he comes in at 6:30.
I called a meeting for 4:00 p.m. of all the Boston and South Shore guys except the dealers. I like to give them a wide berth. They report to Salt and Peppa. I have a piece of a couple of bars in Quincy, and some independent layoff guys who pay me for “protection” just like the bookies. I’m a silent partner in another gin mill in Weymouth, same deal with the bookies there, although their daily receipts are less than Quincy. The Chinese moving into Quincy has been a boon. Most of them still bet with their own kind, but once the Chinese assimilate enough to start betting pro football, Quincy will be a real gold mine.
To me, meetings are a big waste of time, so this was a somewhat unusual occasion. I have a state cop from the Old Colony barracks that I use for sweeping the garage at least once a week, just like I use Somerville cops at the Alibi and Brookline cops at the new A&A. Gotta spread my business around—goodwill means a lot in this line of work. I know, my policy is no serious business is ever discussed either inside a building or a car. But sometimes you get careless, or there’s an exception, like today, when you need to talk to everybody at once. I didn’t have time to go door-to-door.
They drifted in one by one, talking among themselves, until I finally called the meeting to order. I reminded them of what had happened over the last day or so.
“We don’t know who’s doing this, or why,” I said. “Anything you hear, I want to know about it, immediately, no matter how reliable or otherwise you think the information is. Considering they’ve already killed two guys In Town, and one of them was Hole in the Head, this is serious business. You ain’t just looking for money when you blow somebody up. You’re trying to deliver a message.”
; “What’s the message?” one of the guys asked.
I shook my head. “You find out, be sure to tell me, and we’ll both know.” I paused. “Everybody here, I’m gonna have somebody from the Alibi with you nights until further notice. Salt ’n’ Peppa’ll handle that end of it. Talk to them if you got any questions.” I looked out at the fifteen or so guys. Middle-aged mostly, maybe two or three under forty. Most of them had beer bellies, and red faces. Donald Rumsfeld used to say, “You go to the war with the army you’ve got.” I remembered how that war turned out. I was not reassured.
“Any questions?” I asked.
Ditto Foley, the front man for my bar in Quincy on Adams Street, raised his hand.
“So you really got no idea who’s behind this, Bench?”
“If I knew, don’t you think I’d be doing something about it?”
That was the end of the meeting, but Ditto lurked around, watching me exchange small talk with some of the boys. He waited until the crowd had thinned out and then he finally got me one-on-one.
“I need a favor, Bench,” he said.
I shook my head. “Can’t it wait?” I said. “I got my hands full right now. Sally is fuckin’ fuming.”
Ditto is Good People. He’s one of five brothers who came out of Mission Hill. They always struck me as cop material, but they’d all had a lot of problems early on, so now they worked as security guards at various places around the city. You can imagine how valuable they are to me—schedules, keys, guard uniforms, etc. Being of a certain age (they came up in the seventies), the Foley brothers are also quite proficient with fire, if you know what I mean. We call the youngest brother Frankie Flame.
So I knew I was going to have to listen to Ditto’s story.
“It’s my son, Bench,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask you otherwise, but he’s all jammed up.”
I sighed. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I told him to come into my back office. I shut the door behind us. I knew his son by reputation; he was no damn good, all strung out on steroids, always getting into barroom brawls. Ditto told the story quickly and concisely. That was one of the things I liked about all the Foleys. They didn’t waste my time, or anybody else’s.
His son had gotten into yet another knock-down drag-out, at one of those so-called sports bars down in the Financial District. A place I tried to give a good leaving-alone to—Charlestown and Southie crackheads, Oxy dealers stacked up on top of one another, the only ones who have any teeth are the ones who’d done enough time to get free dental work in the can. So Ditto’s kid, with the proud Irish name of Eamon, had gone nuts and broken the jaw of the son of a retired Quincy cop. The cop was now demanding $25,000 to make the case go away.
“What do you want me to do, Ditto?” I asked.
“It ain’t right, Bench,” he said. “This fucking cop is dirty, and his kid’s no fuckin’ good either.” He noticed that I was looking at him askance. “I know, I know, my kid’s an asshole too, but compared to this other kid, he’s fuckin’ Little Boy Blue. Every time this punk kid gets pinched in Quincy, the father gets his cop pals not to show up in court until the judge throws out the case.”
“How many times’s this happened?” I asked.
“Enough so’s the kid’s starting to think he can get away with it up here in Boston too.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” I smiled. “Has he got any other cases coming up in Boston anytime soon?”
Ditto smiled and nodded. That was when I noticed that he had a manila envelope with him. He fumbled with the clasp, pulled out a wad of dog-eared, Xeroxed police reports and court filings and pushed them across the table at me.
“You know my brother-in-law’s a half-assed lawyer, he pulled all these papers for me. Look at ’em. This kid’s got at least five pinches in Norfolk County, Quincy mostly. Beats up his girlfriends, possession with intent to distribute, bouncing checks, stolen credit cards, attaching stolen license plates…”
I was thumbing through the papers. “Ditto, they even got him on a couple of chew ’n’ screws.”
That’s what we call walking out on a restaurant tab. Another name for it is dine ’n’ dash. It’s real high-school Harry stuff, most guys outgrow it about the time they start getting laid regular. This shitheel was twenty-five years old. I kept rifling through the papers until I found what I was looking for—one of the Boston pinches. I pulled it out and scanned it—OUI. It looked like it hadn’t been broomed yet.
“I see a drunk-driving coming up in Dorchester,” I said. “Anything else in Suffolk County?”
Ditto’s face lit up. He knew this stuff by heart. See, I have a presence in Norfolk County, but I try to maintain what you might call a low profile. In Suffolk—Boston—and in Middlesex, which is Somerville, that’s where I can wheel and deal. Costs a lot of dough, but the alternative is endless cop harassment.
Ditto separated out the Boston cases for me—three were still open—and told me where the ex-cop drank in Quincy. Fortunately, he was a drunk and he worked the third shift as the security officer at a trucking company terminal. I knew the bar he hung in every morning. I was a friend of the guy who owned it. In other words, he took bets for one of my bookies.
“I give this cop a check yesterday for five grand,” Ditto said. “More ’n enough, I’d say. He says if I don’t get him another twenty, he’ll make sure Eamon goes away.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Ditto.”
* * *
It was dusk by the time I got back to Somerville. There’s a nice new athletic club in Union Square, and I’d gotten a charter membership on the house. Had my own personal locker. I did a half-hour on the stationary bike, then went upstairs and lifted a few weights, no set pattern, just whatever struck my fancy, upper body mostly. I was thinking about who was killing Sally’s guys, and when they were going to start killing mine. I showered, changed into some casual clothes I leave in my locker, and headed over to The Middlesex Room in Magoun Square. I owned a piece of it, and I liked to hang there in the early evening before it got too loud.
The Middlesex Room was where the young gash in Somerville congregated—the kind of women who liked hanging with, well, guys like me. I had my pick of the local talent, although for a few years now, I’d been running around with a hot ticket named Patty Lamonica. She’d just turned nineteen. I even knew her parents. She’d dropped out of Somerville High as soon as she turned seventeen, had gotten in with a bad crowd and now I was keeping her on the straight and narrow. Or so I told her parents. I’d even gotten her a job in Teele Square, in my real estate lawyer’s office, as the receptionist.
My plan was to stop by the Middlesex Room for a drink or two—I couldn’t take much of the KISS-type music anymore. Then I was going to head over with Patty to my place around the corner from the bakery in Ball Square, which was the nearest thing I had to a permanent address.
It was still early when I arrived. Ninety percent of Somerville’s population has turned over since I was a kid, but you’d never know it from the Middlesex. It was still 1978 there. Saturday Night Fever every night, even Tuesday.
Patty was sitting with a couple of her gum-chewing big-hair girlfriends, wearing a miniskirt and the traditional fuck-me pumps. She had the largest bust by far—I’d paid $5,000 for her “enhancements.” I gave her a kiss on the lips and then sat down. Most nights, I’d have given her the eye, and her friends would have taken the hint and drifted off. Tonight I was content to zone out, at least for a few minutes, listening to the female gossip. I motioned to the bartender for a round of drinks, and the girls all smiled. They had no idea what was going on in the world—not unless it appeared on Facebook.
I just sat there, half-listening, thinking about my own problems. I still didn’t have a clue who was after me—or Sally. There wasn’t much wiseguy competition left, Sally and I had seen to that, with a generous assist from the feds. But if this went on, pretty soon Sally’s suspicions would center on me, and despite our “partnership,” I was still very much t
he junior partner, in terms of age and manpower. As long as none of my guys got hit, I was the number one suspect—excuse me, person of interest. Isn’t that what the cops say now?
If Sally ever started suspecting me, that would be very bad, for both of us. I was better than anybody he had, but he had more guns than I did.
The worst thing is, ninety percent of the time, it’s your friends who kill you. The better the friend, the more likely he is to whack you. There’s only so much time you can spend looking over your shoulder before you sprain your neck.
I took a deep breath and tried to relax and enjoy the scenery at the Middlesex Room. They were all good-looking girls—the pretty ones always run together, I’ve noticed. But Patty was by far the class of the field. She was wearing a low-cut blouse designed to flaunt her new cleavage, and a short leather skirt that showed off her tight but ample Italian ass. Yes, watching her was taking my mind off my problems. I decided it was time for us to leave.
Ball Square—Sally always got a kick out of that name. Growing up in the All-American City, I never even thought about the double entendre until he asked me one day if I ever took Patty over to “Ball Square,” and then started laughing. I guess I’m slow on the uptake.
I leaned over to whisper in her ear and she looked back at me with what they call bedroom eyes. She smiled and nodded.
The valets at the Middlesex knew me, so my Escalade was waiting for us right out front on the curb. I won’t say I wasn’t paying attention, but it was Patty I was paying attention to, not business. And that’s when you’re at your most vulnerable, when they catch you flat-footed. Most guys get clipped within a mile of where they live—that’s a fact. And here I was on my home turf, on the main street—Broadway—less than a mile from my condo in aptly named Ball Square.
Once we were in the car, Patty playfully started pawing me, teasing me about whether I’d laid in any decent champagne. I told her I was planning on laying something else. She asked me if we were going to Florida anytime soon, and as I was telling her probably not for a while I saw a car coming up fast behind me on Broadway. I glanced back—the one night I needed congestion, nobody was around.
