by Howie Carr
As soon as the waiter sashayed away after delivering our drinks, Patty narrowed her eyes.
“You must want something, Bench, if you’re taking me to a nice place like this.”
“C’mon, honey, relax. I just feel bad about the other night. That’s all. Go ahead, drink up.”
“That’s another thing. You don’t like me drinking, now you’re trying to get me drunk. I’m not as dumb as you think I am.”
She was wearing fishnet stockings and a mini-skirt. These guys in here don’t know what they’re missing.
“Stop staring at me like I’m a piece of meat,” she said. “What do you want?”
I tried on a smile, but it didn’t fit. “How’d you like to go to Lewisburg with me for the weekend?”
“Oh, great. What’s my second pick, Brockton?”
“Please, Patty, it’s not that bad.”
“That’s what you said about Otisville too, and it was so fucking cold I swear to God I saw a polar bear.”
“Patty, c’mon. You know, we haven’t spent a nice romantic weekend together in quite a while.”
“And we won’t have one in Lewisburg either. There’s nothing to do there, Bench. Your fucking cousin Gonzo Ronzo always grabs my ass like I’m on the Red Line at rush hour.”
I tried to look hurt. “Babe, you’re practically related to Gonzo Ronzo.”
“Like hell I am,” she spat out. “You only want me to go with you so everybody’ll be checking me out while you’re talking to Bobby Bones.”
She was right about that. If you bring in a broad, it becomes a family thing. Everybody gets to hug each other. That’s when Gonzo Ronzo tries to grope her. But I did need “Mrs. McCarthy” for diversion. If you brought in a broad that looked like Patty …
“You only got to stick around an hour or so,” I said, “and then you can leave and go shopping.”
“Shopping. In Lewisburg. Oh be still my heart. Can I use my Cracker Barrel gift card?”
I took that as a yes, however grudging.
“Thanks, babe.” I motioned the waiter for two more drinks. “I need you to do one more thing for me tomorrow.”
Now she was really giving me the evil eye. She said nothing. The silence stretched on. We were staring at each other. She was daring me to say something.
“I need you to get a gun permit,” I said. “The Escalade is in the shop and I can’t find Marty Hide.”
“So I have to get a gun permit?”
“It’s no big deal. I already got it lined up. Hobart’ll drive you up to New Hampshire tomorrow, the course is two hours long, and then he’ll buy you a piece. I want you to keep it too, you never know these days.”
“Let me guess, it’ll be the same kind of gun you have in the Escalade.”
“I wish, Babe, but PDW’s are hard to come by on short notice. I’m thinking a six-shot thirty-eight revolver, Smith & Wesson. Real basic, nothing exotic. They’re not gonna hit us on I-95. This is just in case we have to do a little walking around in Lewisburg. Anyway, we got a police chief up there in New Hampshire, he’ll write you up the permit tomorrow. No waiting, no red tape.”
“How can I ever thank you, Bench?”
“Lotta broads would like a license to carry, you know.”
“Yeah, about as many as would like to spend a weekend in Lewisburg.”
12
ALL ROADS LEAD TO WORCESTER
Walking back to my house from Foley’s, I got lucky. My cell phone rang and it was a cop from District D-4, Roxbury, a guy I went to the academy with. I’d helped him out once, on the arm, getting some sneaky shots of his bride with a weightlifter who was out on disability from the Fire Department. It didn’t stop the divorce, but it ruined her relationship with the kids, which was all he was really looking for.
And they say cops are crooked. Cops got nothing on “jakes.” And I love the way their funerals are bigger than JFK’s now. Actually, with all the new building codes, you end up with a dead jake about once every five years. Most of the time firefighters get killed nowadays, it’s because some illegal alien welder working without a permit set the building on fire. But I digress. Anyway, I’d called the cop who owed me a favor for catching his wife in the sack with the hero jake and asked him to let me know if anything turned up on the Curto hit. Less than twenty-four hours later, he called me back.
“We got the gun from Parmenter Street,” he said. “Just got the ballistics back. You know the Blanchard’s on Mass Ave?”
A big liquor store on the South End—Roxbury line. Always had a police detail, for obvious reasons. Every stick-up guy and junkie in Boston left it alone, for that same obvious reason. Everyone except one, apparently.
“An illegal tried to stick up the place yesterday. I saw the surveillance video. He practically nodded off with his hand in the cash register. He was so stoned he didn’t even see the cop coming.”
“Anybody I know?”
“The cop or the perp?”
“Very funny,” I said. “Was he using the same piece he used on Sally’s nephew?”
“Negative. He walked in with a twenty-two, not even loaded. The gun, I mean, he was plenty loaded himself. After we grabbed him, we found the Curto piece in the trunk of his car, which was stolen, which I know comes as a terrible shock to you.”
“Let me guess—he didn’t have an valid inspection sticker either.”
“We got him for affixing stolen license plates too.” I heard raised voices behind him. “I’ll call you back,” he said, and hung up. I clicked on the cell phone to find out the number, and all it flashed was 617, the area code. Balls. I couldn’t call him back, I’d have to rely on him to get back to me. That could be ten minutes, or a week.
I was home, working on my second Ballantine Ale, when my phone rang again.
“I’ll make it quick, we got a double homicide on Blue Hill Ave,” he said, and I resisted the temptation to ask him what else was new?
“He must have bought your gun as a throw down. A Walther PPK. Gun like that, had to have a history, right? Especially if a junkie was selling it. You’d think he’d at least ask whoever sold it to him where it came from.”
“Like they’d tell him the truth.”
“You got a point there. Anyway, the gun was on top of the spare tire, no attempt to hide it. Complete fucking moron. You want the perp’s name?”
He gave it to me. José Cruz—there couldn’t be more than a million of them in Massachusetts. But the address was a surprise—Worcester.
“How did he get a gun that was just used in the North End?” I asked.
“You tell me,” he said. “It gets odder. He makes his one call, and five minutes later, we hear from his probation officer. Who is also his brother.”
“Really?” I knew the Probation Department was crooked, but this was just plain sloppy. The way it works in probation is, if you’re a P.O., your best friend takes your brother, and you take your best friend’s brother. Same as the legislature with girlfriends, you hire Mistah Chairman’s squeeze and he hires yours. I asked him for the brother’s name, it was Pablo Cruz. Like the crappy seventies band, only they spelled it “Cruise,” I think.
I said, “You’re kidding me, right?”
Worcester is the Chelsea of the 508 area code. There are worse places than Worcester. There have to be. I pondered for a moment, then remembered who had the most to gain at the State House if the casino bill did a Dixie. Senator Denis “Donuts” Donahue of Worcester. And then I remembered who was in the car that got shot up in Somerville the other night—another probation officer, this one suspended.
You know what I need for Christmas—an iPad. If I had one, I wouldn’t have had to even get up from my table to walk over to my laptop to check out the website of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance to find out if Pablo Cruz was one of Senator Donahue’s contributors. But hell, it didn’t take long even using a Hewlett-Packard. Pablo Cruz, whose employer was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, had maxed out to the senator
for the last three years.
I had my first lead.
13
HARD TIME
When I was in Lewisburg on the contempt beef, I did a lot of reading, mainly biographies. I read one on Jimmy Cagney, and for some reason I’ve always recalled what he said about Joan Blondell—best ass in Hollywood. I was curious, so when I got out I bought a couple of her old movies on DVDs, and Cagney was right.
The reason I mention this is because that’s how I regarded Patty: best ass in Somerville, make that Boston. But damn, she had an attitude, probably because she knew how to strut her stuff. She was a great broad when things were going well, but you wouldn’t want her beside you in a foxhole. Now that I think about it, I remember another line from some book I read in the can: “Adversity often brings two people together, but not when they are of opposite sexes.”
These teen moms in the projects, they routinely carry their homeys’ heat in their purses. I doubt any of them are busting their baby daddies’ balls over it either. And let’s face it—Patty had a lot better life than her fellow teenagers. She didn’t have to drop a new little bastard every year for an extra $110 a month on the Electronic Benefits Transfer card.
But that didn’t stop her from copping a major attitude on me.
Anyway, I rented a new Escalade while she and Hobart were in New Hampshire buying the piece, taking her lesson and getting the permit. They got back around 8:00 p.m. I was sitting by myself in the Alibi, paying some bills as she stomped in in her high heels, Hobart following sheepishly behind her.
“Look at my hands!” she said, thrusting them in front of my face. They looked fine to me.
“They took prints of every one of my fingers,” she said, “like I was some kind of criminal or something.”
“That’s what they do when they give you a license to carry, baby,” I said. “It’s the law. What’s the big deal?” I looked at Hobart and he shrugged.
“You know what else they told me?” she said. “I can’t carry the gun in the car, unless it’s taken apart.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Tell her, Hobart.”
“I did. But she don’t believe me. The chief told her she had to carry it on her person. I tried to tell her, her ‘person’ includes a purse.”
Hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed as she focused her ire on Hobart. “Since when are you a fucking lawyer?” She turned back to me. “I’ve seen Hobart go out with you on collections. He wears a holster.”
“Patty, he wears a holster because he doesn’t carry a purse. Right, Hobart?”
Hobart just rolled his eyes.
“I’m not wearing a holster,” she said. “I don’t work out three hours a day to have some piece bulging out of my Spandex.”
I thought about telling her she should have bought an ankle holster, but I wanted to go have dinner and I didn’t feel like two hours of hot tongue and cold shoulder. You know how it is. They never say something once when they can say it a hundred times. I finally got her calmed down and took her into the North End to Bricco for dinner, then back to my place in Ball Square—no jokes please. We got a few hours sleep and we were on the road by 3:00 a.m. I wanted to be there when visitors’ hours started at nine.
One thing I’ve learned over the years, both inside and out, is that if a guy comes in by himself to talk to a con, the screws will keep an eye on him. They figure he’s up to no good, and they’re almost always right. Bring a broad in, and they relax. Bring a good-looking broad in, and you might as well be invisible.
Hubba hubba hubba, as the GI Joes say in the old World War II movies. Va va va voom. What a pair o’ gams, and what a pair of everything else. That was Patty, a Betty Grable for the twenty-first century. That was her job, that and the gun, just in case. I wasn’t lying when I told her we didn’t figure to get whacked on the New Jersey Turnpike. But you can’t assume anything. Like Sally says, assumptions are the mother of fuck-ups.
Patty was muttering as we got out of the car in the prison parking lot. She knew what was in store. There’s supposed to be a female C.O. to handle the pat downs at the metal detector, but there never is. So she had to sign a five-page waiver, including initialing the bottom of each page, agreeing to be frisked by a male guard. Then she got the usual thorough examination/groping from an unshaven C.O. reeking of fortified wine. Finally we made our way down the hall to the visitors’ area, which is an open room.
Gonzo Ronzo was waiting for me, and it wasn’t long before Bobby Bones drifted in.
It always amazes me, whenever I’m down there, how many guys I see that I served time with. Mainly New York LCN wiseguys. Before I sat down, I had to pay my respects to them, including the traditional kissy-face. Thank God Sally doesn’t go in for that kind of stuff, maybe because we see too much of each other to waste time with the goombah nonsense. I introduced Patty all around, and even though most of them had met her before, a lot of them wanted to tell me again how nice it was that I had taken up with a sweet Italian girl. As I made my rounds, Gonzo Ronzo and Bobby Bones were following us, or should I say Patty, with their eyes.
I finally pulled up a chair across from Gonzo Ronzo and Bobby Bones. After a while, Gonzo Ronzo got up and drifted away, towards Patty. I didn’t have time to worry about that—I’d be hearing about it all the way back to Somerville anyway. I just wanted to find out what Bobby Bones knew and then get the hell out of there. I filled him in on our problem.
“Me and Sally don’t even know who’s coming after us,” I said. “I come down here, I need to find out, is there something going on I don’t know about?”
Bobby looked at me for a second, then said, “You heard about the grand jury?”
“Bones, I’m always hearing about a grand jury. What’s going on with this one?”
“You ever talk to that rat motherfucker Peanuts Merlino?”
Peanuts Merlino, a fucking no-good quote-unquote made man from East Boston. I remembered him from Walpole, when I was a kid, doing my first bit. He was shooting heroin, inside, even then. Years ago, Sally Curto had told him to stay on his side of the tunnel, in East Boston, or Sally would have him whacked. An empty threat, probably, but Merlino never showed his face on Hanover Street, as far as I knew.
Peanuts was also a free man, as far as I knew. But here in the can, he was apparently number one on the Hit Parade. This is why I come down here all the time.
I said, “Merlino’s a rat? He’s, like, the underboss of East Boston, after Blinky.”
“He’s another fucking Whitey Bulger is what he fucking is,” said Bobby. “They say he’s been wired for twelve years. He was wearing a wire all them years they was having that gang war in Eastie. He must have ordered at least a half-dozen hits, did more’n few himself most likely. And the fucking feds had him wired. I heard they even paid the monthly bill on his cell phone.”
This explained a few things. Merlino had come by the Alibi about a year earlier, chatting me up. First he starts in with the usual shit, “Bench, do you remember when?” I don’t remember nothing, especially if the statute of limitations hasn’t run out, or if it’s something there’s no statute of limitations on. He asked me, did I want to make some easy dough? Is the Pope Catholic? But like I told you, I never deal with junkies under any circumstances. He told me anyway that he needed an arbitrator, I guess you’d call it. A mediator. Someone who was respected, to settle some beefs. Didn’t make any sense, him coming to me instead of Sally, but the feds probably put him up to it, figuring I’d bite. I told him he’d have to clear it with Sally, which was my polite way of telling Peanuts to go fuck himself.
“You never did nothing with him, did you, Bench?” Bobby Bones said.
“I wouldn’t tell that no-good rat bastard shit if his mouth was full of it. But what’s this got to do with me getting shot at by Dominicans and crooked P.O.s in Somerville?”
“Everybody over there in East Boston is done for. Peanuts has been wearing a wire and doing business with all them guys all those years. They g
ot guys on tape bragging about scores they’d forgotten they ever done. And this ain’t no rumor either.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “How can he still be walking around if everybody knows he’s wearing a wire?”
Bobby Bones smiled. “He ain’t walking around no more, Bench. That’s the point. Merlino has fucking vanished—you can take that one to the bank. They know he’s gone ’cause there was one dealer in Day Square that owed him fifty grand, and he had it ready for Peanuts, and Peanuts didn’t show up to collect.”
This was where Sally’s feuds worked against him. When he got pissed at somebody, if he didn’t have him whacked, Sally would never speak to the guy again. I don’t know how many guys he’s told, don’t ever set foot on Hanover Street or I’ll stick your hand in the toaster. Sometimes these guys come to me, ask me to intercede with Sally, trying to make things right. Not once has he ever relented. When you make Sally’s shit list, you’ve made it for life. So half the wiseguys in the city aren’t speaking to him, so he doesn’t get enough information about what’s going on out on the street, and what happens is big fucking hairy two-legged warts like Peanuts Merlino develop right under his nose.
And Blinky’s. I blamed Blinky more than Sally, actually. He should have put all this shit on the record.
“Has Blinky got a problem?” I asked, but before Bobby Bones could answer, I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Patty.
“Honey, can I have the keys to the car? I wanna go shopping.”
I handed over the keys and didn’t even ask her when she was coming back. I wasn’t thinking about anything except what a jackpot Sally’s Eastie crew was in if Bobby Bones knew what he was talking about, and I had no doubt that he did.
I said, “Blinky don’t tell us nothing about this.”
“If somebody you’d been running with for twenty years had flipped, and he had you on tape, would you want anyone else to know about it?”
Obviously not. If you were Blinky, the best thing that could happen is that the wiseguys that Peanuts hadn’t recorded would start moving in on your rackets. The worst thing that could happen was guys like me and Sally would decide to turn you over to Human Resources, because if you were going down, obviously you couldn’t be trusted.
