Killers

by Howie Carr

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bartender glancing over at me. He was shaking his head. Perhaps I’d spoken too loudly. Like me, he didn’t want any trouble. I nodded, to silently indicate to him I’d keep my voice down so that the two guys from Stop & Shop wouldn’t notice anything amiss. I’d have bought them a drink except I didn’t want them looking over this way to thank me. Then I turned back to the cop.

  “I’m going to tell you just one more time: you’ve been paid five grand, now you better quit while you’re ahead. You won’t be hearing from me again. Neither will your son. But if my friend or his son hears from you, you’re going to be in a world of hurt, and I don’t mean maybe. Some guys can fix things in Quincy, and some guys can fix things in Boston, and the ones who can fix things in Boston, those are the guys you have to watch out for.”

  His mouth was half-open. He’d be pissed when he sobered up, as much as he ever sobered up, that is.

  “So you’re Ditto Foley’s muscle?”

  “I’m just a friend of his—and yours,” I said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, and that’s when I realized he was one of those guys who just wouldn’t listen to reason. Sometimes you get more with kind words and a billy club than you get with kind words. So I grabbed my sap, gripped it tightly, rose from the booth and reached across to slug him squarely across the side of his face. Luckily, he was so drunk he didn’t cry out, just slumped out of the booth and thudded loudly onto the floor, unconscious. The two guys at the bar heard that and turned around, as did the bartender.

  “Guy can’t handle his booze anymore,” I yelled. “Wet brain, like Ted Kennedy there at the end. It’s a tough way to go.”

  The bartender had come back to check on things. He wanted to do something, but I told him, “Just give them a round on me, Sully, and put it on my tab. I’ll get him out of here.”

  Free drinks! That’s usually all it takes to make a concerned citizen lose interest. I leaned over and grabbed Fitzpatrick by the collar of his jacket. For the first time I noticed the gut on him. He was a real load. I dragged him out to the back door, then out into the alley. I was out of breath by the time I dropped his dead weight onto the pavement. I fumbled for my car keys and then unlocked the trunk. I gathered him up again and grunted as I pushed him against the open trunk. He fell back heavily, still unconscious, so I grabbed him by the legs and lifted him up and into the trunk. I slammed it down and went around, got into the car, started it and drove off.

  A drunk ex-cop passed out in the trunk of my car, and it wasn’t even eight in the morning. This day had nowhere to go but up.

  * * *

  My next stop was Sally’s headquarters In Town. It was on Prince Street, and everyone called it the Dog House because Sally’s mother used to sell hot dogs out of it. I pulled my car up in front of the sign “Reserved—Valet Parking.” The valet had taken the day off so I just got out of the car and walked up the steps that led to the front door.

  There were two guards posted outside the door. One of them was Cheech, in his usual overcoat. His brother Hole in the Head wouldn’t even be buried for a couple of hours, but for Cheech the mourning period was over. On the other side of the steps was one of the younger guys in his crew, a kid named Blur, wearing a Bruins jacket over a large handgun, maybe a .44.

  I saluted them and bolted up the steps. There were two more guys just inside the door, and I walked past them and headed into Sally’s back office. His son Jason was sitting there, his legs crossed. Usually this time of day, Jason would be pumping gas himself at the gas station Sally had bought him on Cambridge Street, at the bottom of Beacon Hill. That station was Jason’s pride and joy, maybe because his father left him alone there. This morning Jason was looking sheepishly at his father, who was screaming at somebody on his cell phone.

  “No no no no,” he was yelling. “Don’t you even think about it!”

  He slammed down the cell phone and looked up at me.

  “That fucking broad Liz. She gets arrested again last night, and now she wants me to send a lawyer up to the first session and bail her out.”

  “Drugs?” I asked.

  “Not directly,” he said. “Common nightwalking. Turning tricks on Marginal Road. She claims she was set up, but I’ve heard that before. I give her at least a grand at the wake—you saw me—and now she’s locked up again.”

  “Poor kid,” I said.

  “‘Poor kid’?” Sally said, incredulously. “Whose side are you on? I got people shooting at me, and now I got this here to worry about.”

  He grabbed another cigarette and lit it. I sat down heavily.

  “Hi, Jason,” I said but before he could answer, his father cut him off.

  “Never mind the small talk,” Sally said. “What have you got for me?”

  “Nothing new,” I said. “You think anymore about that friend of ours that we were talking about last night.”

  Even though Jason was Sally’s son, he wasn’t one of us. He didn’t need to know about Peanuts and Blinky. If he ever got called before a grand jury, he’d be in a jam—he’d have to either implicate his father (and me) in a murder conspiracy or commit perjury or take a contempt citation.

  “You got a plan yet?” I asked.

  Sally took a long drag and methodically blew out a series of smoke rings before he spoke again. “You know, I got my own sources too. I’m hearing the same shit you’re hearing, I make a few discreet inquiries, I’m satisfied I ain’t got a problem.”

  “So why’d they take our friend’s nephew out of general population?”

  “You’d have to ask them. I only worry about me.”

  “You’re not worried about our other friend there?”

  “No more’n I’m worried about anybody else.” He didn’t include me with Blinky, in or out, not that I expected him to. I felt the same way about him. That was one of the main reasons we got along. It was strictly criminal. That’s also why he didn’t shoo Jason out of the room while we were talking. Being Irish, I wasn’t a threat to some day muscle Jason out of the line of succession and succeed Sally. What I would be taking over, and why I would want to be taking it over, I could never figure out. But Sally and the boys cared about this thing of theirs, or at least pretended to.

  “That kid from City Hall ever find out anything?” Sally asked

  “I haven’t talked to him lately, but he’s got a couple irons in the fire,” I said.

  “Cripes, I hope they’re hotter than yours.”

  The phone rang again. Sally looked at me glumly and then down at the phone. He must have had a premonition it was more bad news. He was right. He picked up the receiver and listened for a few seconds.

  “Noooooooo!” he screamed. “He can’t be dead! He owes me $13,000.”

  I’d been ready to leave, but now I had to know who’d bought the farm. I sat back down again as Sally kept yelling, until he finally slammed down the phone without saying good-bye.

  “Remember Camel?” he said. Another morbidly obese half-a-wiseguy, ran a cheese shop on Richmond Street, a degenerate gambler, a barfly. “Took a fucking heart attack last night at Mohegan Sun, keeled right over in front of a slot machine. Deader’n a mackerel. I’m out another 13 g’s. I can’t fuckin’ believe it.”

  “Gee, Dad,” said Jason. “I mean, what did you expect, the way he smoked? After all, his nickname was—”

  “Shut the fuck up, college boy!” Sally snarled.

  Death cancelled all debts. That’s just the way it was. Henry Sheldon could tell you that. I stood back up to leave. So did Jason. Sally looked up at his son with disgust.

  “Sit down, college boy,” he said. “I want to talk to you about these Las Vegas nights.”

  He looked at me. “Where you goin’? Sit down—I want you should hear this too. This kid of mine don’t believe nothing I tell him. But you—he thinks you walk on water.”

  I sat back down.

  Sally ran Las Vegas nights for some of the local Ca
tholic churches. It was short money, but it kept guys working. Jason had been promoted to boss, but unless you’ve worked your way up, you’ll be lost running a Las Vegas night, or anything else.

  “I hear you’re using cards more’n half an hour,” Sally said to Jason, his eyes narrowing in rage.

  “Dad, I tell ’em to keep changing the decks, but sometimes they forget.”

  “They forget?” he said. “Do they know whose money they’re playing with?”

  “Gosh dad, I thought you told me to keep that on the q.t.”

  “What I meant was, tell them it’s your dough, but come on tough, like you’re the wiseguy. Make ’em fear you!”

  Sally looked over at me. “Right, Bench?”

  “Explain things to them, Jason,” I said gently. “Tell them how card sharps don’t need any time to mark the decks, that’s what you say to them, so they understand. Just explain it.”

  “Explain nothing! Say that’s a fuckin’ order! Change the goddamn decks!” Sally pointed a fat finger at his son. “And that’s a fuckin’ order ’cause you’re a fuckin’ idiot. And by the way, I also heard some of your friends are letting these motherfuckers bet up to $300 a hand. I told you, twenty-five bucks max.”

  “They forget sometimes.”

  “They forget? Then you tell them you got some guys who might forget not to beat the shit out of them.”

  “Gee, Dad, it’s not as easy as it used to be. I got people coming up to me now, they don’t like the odds in the game. They tell me they’re being ripped off.”

  “Ripped off?” Sally jumped up, supporting himself with his two hands on the desk, leaning forward into his son’s face. “All you gotta do is tell them, ‘It’s for charity, you fuckin’ asshole!’”

  He slumped back down into his chair and glared at Jason for a few seconds longer before turning to me.

  “You doin’ anything for dinner?” Sally asked me, before looking back over at his son. “I’m talking to Bench, not you, college boy.”

  I shrugged. Sally wasn’t much for formal invitations.

  “Come on by the Café Ravenna tonight around six-thirty,” he said. “I got some shit we need to talk about.”

  “We can’t talk about it now?” I said.

  “Nah,” he said, giving me a dismissive wave with his cigar. “What I want to talk about, I’ll know more tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said, warily. Jason looked over at me plaintively.

  “Can I get a ride with you back up to the station?” he asked, and I said sure. I felt as sorry for the kid as I felt for Liz. It was that kind of day.

  I stood up and walked back outside. Cheech and Blur watched me coming down. Both of them were smirking, which I didn’t understand, but when I reached the pavement, Blur pulled me over and leaned in close to whisper in my ear:

  “You got somebody in the trunk, Bench?”

  I’d forgotten all about the drunk cop. I looked at Blur and nodded without saying anything.

  “Has he been yelling?”

  “Crying’s more like it,” Cheech interjected.

  “I’m sorry, guys, I apologize.” When it’s called for, I believe in admitting my errors. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  I went around to my front passenger door, opened it and picked up the billy club off the seat. Then I walked around to the trunk and slammed the club down on the hood. Hated to do it, more body work for Rocco, but how else could I get his attention without opening the trunk? I loudly banged on it, putting two big dents in the trunk.

  “Hey, you in there, shut the fuck up or you’re in big trouble!”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  What a stupid question to ask. This guy was a moron, even by cop standards.

  “I told you, shut the fuck up. Now listen to me. Take off your pants and tie them around your eyes, you got that?”

  Cheech and Blur were now standing close to the car, cracking up. This was going to be the highlight of their day. Jason just looked confused.

  “Are you gonna kill me?” the voice came from the trunk.

  “Listen gavone”—I threw that in for the In Town guys, and now they were laughing even harder—“if I was going to kill you, why would I need you to blindfold yourself?”

  Then I asked Cheech to get me a bottle of the cheapest booze Sally had in his liquor cabinet, and when he returned with a fifth of Lechmere gin, I hopped in the car with Jason and headed for Government Center.

  “Thanks for the ride, Bench,” Jason said.

  “No problem, kid,” I said.

  Traffic was crawling, as it always is around Quincy Market. Jason cleared his throat and I had the uncomfortable feeling he wanted to get something off his chest. I was the wrong guy, for this kind of thing I’m always the wrong guy, but sometimes you don’t have any choice.

  “Bench,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Do you think my father’s disappointed in me?” It wasn’t my place to say anything, and even if it was, I like to keep things strictly professional. It was an awkward position to be in, especially stuck in traffic, all by ourselves.

  Jason said, “I mean, I know he’s disappointed in me, but I just … I don’t know, sometimes it’s like, it’s like you’re closer to him than I am.”

  The light turned green and a big fat female Obama voter sauntered across the crosswalk, oblivious as she talked on her Obamaphone. I leaned on the horn, she turned to give me the evil eye and I responded with the finger. The light was turning yellow as I finally made it around her fat ass and across the intersection.

  “C’mon Jason, you’re his son, his flesh and blood. I’m just another guy from Somerville who knocks around with him.”

  “No, no, it’s more than that, and you know it.”

  “Look,” I said, “your father just wants what’s best for you. He loves you, he really does.”

  “Yeah, but he wishes I’d turned out like you,” Jason said, staring straight ahead.

  Some guys are cut out to be wiseguys, and some aren’t, it’s as simple as that. The kid grew up in Nahant, so the odds were against him—or for him, if you prefer—from the start. He was a nice kid, polite, not a fag, what more did Sally want? I never could figure out what bothered Sally most about Jason, the fact that he was happy running a gas station, or that he’d gone to college for a couple of years.

  College, probably. I think Sally figured as long as Jason was running a gas station, even on the backside of Beacon Hill, maybe some day he’d straighten out and start buying loads of hijacked merchandise from his truck-driving customers.

  Then Sally would have something to be proud of.

  Sally had a nephew, a real nephew, his brother Louie’s kid. Jesse James, they called him. Now there was a fucking chip off the old block. Kid was twenty-four, twenty-five years old, grew up in Eastie, dropped out of the tenth grade, a real bad-ass. He started ripping off drug dealers in Chelsea, passing himself off as an undercover cop, pulling out a badge, yelling “motherfucker this” and “motherfucker that” like a real hard-on.

  For the record, Sally was appalled, told Louie to cool the kid off. Off the record, he was proud as hell. He was living up to the Curto name. Then one night he tried to rip off a dealer who turned out to be an undercover DEA agent. Cop pulled a gun, Jesse James shot him in the leg, and now he’s doing like five hundred years in ADX Florence, the fed’s “supermax” prison out in Colorado.

  I had to go out there with Sally and Louie last summer to visit Jesse James. I signed in as “Jason Curto.” If you think Lewisburg or Devens is depressing, check out Florence sometime. No wonder John Gotti got cancer when he was at the old supermax prison in Marion, Illinois. Dying was the only way he could get out.

  “Look, Jason, it’s none of my business, so you can tell me to shut up anytime—”

  “No, Bench, you’re the only one who’s close to my dad that I can talk to—”

  “Well, what I was going to say is, st
op feeling sorry for yourself. Besides, look what happened to Jesse James. Was he a success? Do you think your dad wishes you were locked up like your cousin, for life?”

  “Of course not, but sometimes I think he wishes I were what he’d consider a success.” He paused. “Like you.”

  We were at the gas station now. I turned off the ignition and looked over at Jason.

  “Jason, let me tell you something, off the record. Guys like your father and me, we’re all done. I’m a fucking dinosaur, I’m the last of the Mohicans. Someday something’s gonna happen…” My voice trailed off, and Jason nodded. It didn’t help his own personal predicament, but he knew what I meant.

  He shook my hand and got out of the car. I was just getting ready to take off again when I heard a tapping on my window. I looked around and it was Liz fuckin’ McDermott. This really was my lucky day. I’d have to remind myself: don’t play the numbers tonight. No way I could win today.

  I rolled down the window.

  “Bench,” she said, “I got to talk to you.”

  Her and everybody else. From the trunk I heard more noises. It sounded like he was kicking the trunk. I sighed, grabbed the club off the backseat where Jason had thrown it, and got out of the car.

  “Excuse me, Liz, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  I went around to the back of the car and this time I really slammed the billy club down on the trunk hard.

  “Shut up!” I said. “I’m not warning you again!”

  “Where are we?” came a terrified voice.

  “It’s not where we are, it’s where you’re gonna be if you don’t shut the fuck up! Do you hear me?”

  A few seconds later, I heard, “Ye-ye-yesss.”

  “Say ‘yes, sir!’” I ordered.

  “Yes, sir!” he said.

  I turned around and walked back to the front of the car. Now Liz was laughing.

  “Oh, Bench, you’re such a card.”

  “What do you want, Liz, I’m busy today.”

  “Can you drop me off someplace?” she asked. “I just made bail.”

  “Who put up the dough?” I asked.

  “The Weeper,” she said. He was a notoriously tightfisted bail bondsman. I was surprised he would spring for a drug addict like Liz.