by Howie Carr
In the rackets, nobody gets fired. Sometimes they get run off, but that can be risky too, because if they fucked up here, chances are they’re going to fuck up in the next place they end up. And then they get to thinking about what they know from back in Boston that they could trade up, and how they might be able to snitch themselves into the Witness Protection Program if they can point the finger at somebody else high enough up in the rackets.
So we frown on people leaving town. Like Don Corleone, we like to keep our friends close and our enemies closer, until someone from HR—that would be me—can work out a severance plan, if you know what I mean.
Another thing I do is, I put shit on the record. That means, I tell Sally what I’m doing. He isn’t exactly my boss, but I still have to answer to him. He’s number one, and I’m number one-A. So if I’m going to talk to a cop, I tell Sally. I don’t want nobody running to him behind my back and whispering in his ear, ‘I seen McCarthy talking to a fed.’ Guys have gotten hit for less. I also let him know if I’m going down to Lewisburg, or Otisville, to talk to a guy.
This is the kind of shit I’m always thinking about when I talk to Sally.
“You hear anything about a grand jury?” I asked him.
“All I ever hear about is some fuckin’ grand jury somewhere,” he said. “Boston, Worcester, Providence, you wanna talk to me, get in line, motherfuckers.”
“This is a new one,” I said. “They’re pulling in guys that’re doing federal bits. They’re asking them about this problem we got.”
“You got some names to go with that?” Sally paused. “No, I take that back. Don’t tell me no names.”
It’s a funny thing, sometimes the cons inside know more about what’s going on outside than we do. They get visits from the cops and prosecutors all week, and from their girlfriends and assorted wiseguys every weekend. And when they do get subpoenaed to come back to Boston to testify before some grand jury, they have to make sure they have a story that will stand up, or they’ll be in deep shit when they get sent back to their home prison. You don’t want to be known as a rat inside. This is why the feds have set up their own separate rat prisons, if you don’t quite rate the Witness Protection Program. Tough places to do time, from what I hear, because everybody’s trying to rat out everybody else. A lot of foreigners in there—Russians, Israelis, Mexicans. Can’t trust ’em. A guy once told me, those guys’d stick you with life to get a day off their sentences. So you can’t talk—about anything.
Sally Curto took a drag on his cigarette.
“You know, I always dreamed of the day we’d have our own casinos in Boston. Figured we’d all be rolling in dough. Our own unions shaking down the owners, skimming the parking receipts, loan-sharking, all that shit, and we never would have had to even go inside the casinos and give all them retired FBI agents they’d have working security fucking hard-ons when they caught us on the surveillance cameras.”
I nodded. “Lot more dough in casinos than in those Las Vegas nights.”
“No shit, and the worst thing about those Las Vegas nights is, we’re being robbed blind by the civilians. With casinos, we wouldn’t have to worry about that shit, ’cause we’d be the ones doing the robbing.”
“Maybe it still works out that way, Sal.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But we ain’t off to an auspicious beginning. Somebody’s using us for target practice to sink the whole deal, at least that’s the way I see it.”
“You know what they say, Sally. Information is power. Right now we’re real short on power. That’s why I’m heading out this weekend. You don’t wanna know where.”
“Damn right I don’t. Just keep me informed.” He flicked his cigarette into the harbor. “On second thought, don’t keep me informed.”
10
IMPERSONATING A KENNEDY
The place was familiar—J.J. Foley’s. The time, not so much—10:30 a.m. Morning drinkers are a depressing, sad-sack lot. But at least I didn’t have to worry about anybody reporting back to the State House that I was sitting down with the attorney general’s top political operative/fixer/bagman, a former Herald reporter named Typo Rivard.
Typo hadn’t been a bad legman—feeding stuff to the rewrite guys back in the newsroom. But when the old system withered away and he had to start writing his own copy, he quickly ran into trouble. The problem was, he would take a drink under extreme social pressure, pressure that for Typo usually started before lunch. By late afternoon, when he was knocking out his stories, he was always carrying at least half a load. He started fucking up his copy, basic totally avoidable errors like whether a suspect was released on bail or not, or how a vote had gone in the legislature, etc. Papers hate to have to run corrections.
Finally, he came up with the bright idea of blaming all the errors in his copy on typographical errors down in the composing room. That worked, up to a point, until the Herald went to computers, and he was in effect setting his own type.
Soon thereafter, Typo made the move to the dark side, as Katy and her friends called it. He became a flack for a politician.
I presumed the sit-down had been called to discuss the rather mysterious auto accident involving the lieutenant governor two nights earlier on I-190 in Sterling. At 5:20 in the morning. Seventeen miles from his house. He said he’d been out looking for a cup of coffee and an early edition of the Herald, which was odd, considering that he no doubt had Internet service that would have enabled him to read the paper online at his house at any time after midnight. He was driving an unmarked State Police Crown Vic when he hit a patch of black ice. Or so he said. He had told reporters he was driving at the speed limit, but the State Police later estimated he’d been doing 108 miles per hour. Suddenly the lieutenant governor’s nickname was Crash.
The joke was Crash was lucky he hadn’t been charged with impersonating a Kennedy. Still, there was one difference between Crash and a Kennedy. When the cops arrived, he demanded to take a Breathalyzer, which he passed.
So he wasn’t drunk at 5:20 in the morning. That left only two other possibilities, one of which (girlfriend) was bad, and the other of which (boyfriend) was worse. Unless of course you believed his second explanation, that he had decided to survey the damage from a recent ice storm—at night.
The governor was a lame duck—one reason casinos were on the table—and the lieutenant governor was one among many Democrats running to succeed him. Typo’s boss was also being “urged” to run, as Typo told the papers, off the record, like it was some kind of state secret.
I got to Berkeley Street first and grabbed a sparkling water and lime—I’m trying to cut down on my pre-noon drinking—and read the Herald while I waited for my connection to arrive. The governor, the lieutenant governor, the public safety commissioner and the State Police colonel were all refusing to release Crash’s cell phone records, which would have shown who he was talking to when he suddenly floored it, either consciously or otherwise. Naturally the pols were blaming the stonewalling on the State Police. The staties, who are renowned for putting the fix in, were claiming that the phone records couldn’t be released for the traditional “security reasons.” Both newspapers had already appealed the decision to the secretary of state, another ambitious State House lifer who likewise wanted to run for governor.
“Jack Reilly, as I live and breathe.” It was Typo Rivard. He was over sixty now, and hadn’t graduated high school, forget college or law school. But every statewide officeholder was cut a little slack—allowed one or two guys on his payroll whose only job was getting the political grunt work done, no questions asked. Typo was the A.G.’s guy. He made $120,000 a year, more than anyone else in the office except his boss. His job description was “special assistant attorney general,” which raised a few eyebrows, especially since it got him into Group 4 retirement group—along with police and other first-responders—where he could retire with a full boat anytime he wanted after the age of fifty-five.
Say what you will, despite his lack of formal edu
cation, Typo was undoubtedly the leading expert in the A.G.’s office on drunk-driving statutes, quite an accomplishment considering how many prosecutors and state cops the A.G. had working for him.
“Looking good, Jack,” he said, lightly tapping me on the arm. “Looks like you’ve lost weight.”
I smiled. “C’mon, you can’t shit a shitter, Typo. Sit down and tell me what you want, as if I didn’t know.”
He frowned. “Is that brusque tone anyway to talk to someone who goes back with you as far as I do? I remember when you worked for the mayor at the State House.”
“And I remember when you worked for the Herald and got a story that would have proven very embarrassing to us, and all you wanted in return for spiking it was a job at City Hall for your girlfriend.”
Typo laughed, sat down and took a sip of his brown water—he wasn’t trying to kid anybody about his drinking. “You know, Jack, I was never cut out to be a ‘journalist’ any more than you were cut out to be a ‘cop.’”
“Typo, I’d love to bat the breeze with you, but I got a busy day, so let’s get right to it. We’re here to talk about Crash, because if this wasn’t something that smelled really bad, you’d be handling it yourself. Has he got a girlfriend, or is he queer? I’m guessing the latter. Am I right?”
Typo banged his fist on the table. “By God, that’s what I like about you, boy. Cut right through the bullshit! No politically correct euphemisms. Of course he’s gay, or that’s our working supposition anyway. You know how many middle-aged heterosexual men can’t sleep at night—sleep apnea, perhaps, so they get up at night and drive and drive to a local rest area where they can meet their fellow insomniacs—”
“I didn’t read anything about a rest stop.”
“Nor will you, unless you and I putting our heads together can figure out how to pry that incident report out of the State Police’s sticky little paws. To put it in a nutshell, pardon the pun, there’s a pickle palace up there in Sterling, behind the twenty-four-hour rest stop. Lot less suspicious to be there, with two or three all-night restaurants or doughnut shops. A lot easier to cruise in than your traditional old dark ‘rest areas’ where they lock up everything at sundown. The local inverts have taken to congregating out behind the McDonald’s, in their cars. Lotta complaints lately apparently, so C Troop had been sending a car around, just to scatter ’em. God knows you can’t arrest ’em anymore, they got more rights than illegal aliens, especially if they’re in drag.”
“That’s what I don’t understand about this whole thing, Typo. Given the modern-day Democrat electorate in this state, wouldn’t Crash be unbeatable if he came out of the closet?”
“You might think so, but on the other hand, he has to think about all the others of his, uh, stripe. How much is too much of a good thing, even in Massachusetts? Besides, it’s one thing to come out on Gay Pride Day or in an op-ed piece in the Globe, and another thing to get busted for deviant sexual behavior.”
“‘Deviant?’” I said. “No such thing anymore. Sodomy’s legal.”
“Okay, open and gross. Lewd and lascivious. Whatever. You know what I’m talking about.”
There used to be another statute on the books—being abroad in the night. It had taken on a whole new meaning in this day of transgender rights, or would have, if it hadn’t been struck down as unconstitutional just like every other beautifully vague law I used to roust assholes with back when I was on the job.
“Anyway,” Typo continued, “Crash sees the State Police car, panics and takes off at a hundred eight miles an hour and spins out.”
“I read most of that already in the papers. Everything but a believable explanation.”
Typo paid no attention to my interruption as he went on telling the story, or what he knew of it.
“All the trooper sees is a dark car speeding off south on I-190. Originally he did put it in the report that he thought it was the same car as in the rest stop, but the brass made him take it out. At the behest of the usual suspects in the Corner Office.”
I shook my head. “This is not going to be easy.”
“That’s why I have come to you. As you know we have our own crew of staties, plainclothes, detectives, and they assure us that the guys in Area C swear he was at the alfresco bathhouse.”
“Isn’t he married?”
“And your point is?”
“Doesn’t he have kids?”
“Adopted, from Russia.”
“I can’t see getting this into the papers.”
“Who said anything about getting it into the papers? We just want to get him out of the governor’s fight.”
“This’ll take time. It won’t be cheap.”
And then Typo said the magic words. “Money is no object.”
11
CLASS OF ’038
It’s a hell of a thing when you have to drive four hundred miles to a prison in Lewisburg to find out what’s going on in Boston. But that’s just the way it is—the cons in there have a grapevine better than anything on the street. Maybe because everybody on the street is too busy robbing and stealing—and getting high, basically trying to make up for all the lost time from their earlier bits, which is why it usually isn’t too long until they’re back inside, once again swearing that when they get out it’ll never happen again.
The fact is, if you’re a wiseguy, you know you’re going to have to do time sooner or later. And when you finally do get lugged, how the hell are you supposed to pass the time, except by keeping tabs on what the other wiseguys inside are doing.
It’s all part of the prison paranoia. Which is another reason it sucks so much to be back, even for a few hours. All the way down, all I can ever think about as I drive are the three numbers—038. Those are the last three numbers on your Bureau of Prisons ID if you’re from Boston. When I got out I swore I’d never be 038 again, but you’ve heard that one before, right? So far, though, I’m doing okay.
The guy I needed to talk to was Bobby Bones. He used to be on my crew when we were kids, robbing armored cars. The jeopardy got to be a little too much for me, but he tried to keep the crew going, until one day in New Hampshire when they killed a guard. Last time I checked the BOP website, he’s eligible for parole in 2054, when he’s eighty-six. Now that’s a bit. After I drifted away and started working for, and then with, Sally, Bobby Bones added his brother Billy Bones to the crew. Now Billy too was doing what amounted to life, at Otisville, in upstate New York.
That’s why I had to talk to Bobby. He and his brother had the two big Northeastern wiseguy holding pens covered. Bobby would know who was being shipped out to Boston to testify in front of any new grand juries. Once I knew who they were bringing in, I’d have a lot better idea of what the feds were up to, and that might give me a lead as to why somebody was trying to take me and Sally off the board.
At least I hoped so, because it was a large pain in the ass to have to drive down there. First of all I had to set it up to Bobby over the phone. Of course he can’t call me, because I’m an ex-con and a “career criminal” and I have “OC” (organized crime) stamped on my BOP jacket. Plus, I’m not a relative, so I have to call his sister Lori in Charlestown to set up a call. His sister the junkie. Which means I have to bring her a few packets of methadone, which I have to pick up from Salt and Peppa.
I have no idea what Lori’s drug of choice is, but apparently she uses the methadone as a kind of chaser. Bobby Bones tells me, don’t give it to her too early in the day, she’s not supposed to take nothing until she feels bad. I’m guessing she feels bad as soon as she wakes up if she doesn’t have some crack or Oxys or heroin or whatever she’s on. As a matter of fact, I’m betting the last time she ever felt good, anytime, was when she was in high school, maybe thirty years ago.
Anyway, he can’t call until 7:00 p.m. at the earliest, and I ain’t spending the day sitting in the front parlor with Lori. I mean, she didn’t look all that great when she was seventeen, and if drugs can ruin Lindsay Lohan, you can imagine wh
at they do to a Charlestown project rat. But Bobby Bones always asks, did I cut the little pink fuckin’ pill in half, and I always have to lie and say yes.
When she finally gets him on the line, I have to politely tell Lori to get the fuck out of the room, please, and she cops an attitude, so while I’m talking to her brother, I have to throw her another packet of methadone.
Then I have to make sure that my cousin from Malden, a stick-up guy named Gonzo Ronzo, is still there at Lewisburg, because he’s the one I have to be visiting officially. Unless you’re a lawyer, you only get to visit relatives. So I want Bobby Bones to just drift over while I’m talking to Cousin Gonzo Ronzo, because it wouldn’t look good if the feds thought I was catching up with a guy from my old crew.
Plus I had another problem. The shooters had put two bullets in the crankshaft of the Escalade. It was going to take Rocco days to get it back in shape, because he was having to work out of the garage in my condo, since we couldn’t very well tow a bullet-riddled SUV through Somerville, Cambridge and Boston all the way back to Roxbury.
I called my car-insurance guy in Davis Square. He’s connected, and he reads the newspapers, so I didn’t have to tell him much before he figured it out. He offered to total it, no questions asked, which would have been a big favor ninety-nine percent of the time. But he didn’t know about the hide. That was a real custom job to begin with, but the bigger problem was, I haven’t even seen Marty Hide for two or three years. The word was he’d relocated to Miami, a good late-career move for sure, considering all the work he could get down there from the local Tony Montanas. He’s probably even building hides on their yachts.
Good for Marty Hide, but bad for me, because I needed to get down to Lewisburg fast, and I couldn’t be carrying a gun under the front seat. All these years later, they could still violate me.
There was only one thing to do. I called Patty and told her we were going out to dinner in the South End, one of those chi-chi joints where eighty percent of the customers are gay, and zero percent were born in Boston.
