Cogan's Trade (25 page)

A red Capri passed behind the Duster.

“That’s what I mean,” Cogan said. “You don’t get away with things like that. Trattman was the same way. Thought he was gonna get away with it.”

“He did,” Frankie said. “Once.”

“That’s what I mean,” Cogan said. “You don’t get away with nothing once, it happens again.”

The bronze Riviera passed behind the Duster.

“That’s him,” Cogan said.

“I’m not sure,” Frankie said.

“Yes you are,” Cogan said. “If you’re not you got the first all-over hard-on in the world.” He opened his eyes and watched the Riviera. It pulled in beyond the back door of the complex.

“How long’s he gonna be, kid?” Cogan said.

“I dunno,” Frankie said.

“Okay,” Cogan said, “I asked you nice. Now, does he fuck her here or does he fuck her some place else?”

“She’s got a roommate,” Frankie said. “He knows a guy’s got a motel in Haverhill.”

“Okay,” Cogan said, “he’s just gonna be friendly, then.” He watched as the door of the Riviera opened. He watched the long white leg of the girl. He watched
Amato emerge from the building shadow and walk around the rear of the car. He watched Amato assist the girl from the car and shut the door.

Cogan reached down on the floor of the Duster with both hands and picked up a five-shot Winchester semiautomatic shotgun. He put it across his lap, steadying it with his right hand. With his left hand he took the key out of the Duster’s ignition.

“Hey,” Frankie said, “I mean, I was gonna start it and everything, we could get a start.”

“I know,” Cogan said, “but, it’s probably gonna get noisy around here, and I known guys, heard a lot of noise, they got too good a start and left somebody standing around with his thumb up his ass.”

Cogan watched Amato walk the girl to the door of the apartment complex.

Cogan opened the passenger door of the Duster, exposing the masking tape he had used to seal the interior light switch off, and slipped out of the car. Amato and the girl were thirty-five yards away, embracing at the door. Cogan crouched against the car, his left elbow bracing against the top of the Duster’s hood, the stock of the gun tight against his right shoulder.

Amato broke the embrace. The girl opened the door with a key. Amato waited on the step until the door closed behind her. She turned and waved at him, using only the fingers of her right hand. She was smiling. Amato waved back, in the same way. He turned away from the door. The girl vanished up the stairs.

Cogan fired the first deer slug at Amato. It caught him low on the abdomen and hurled him backward against the building. Cogan waited until Amato hit the top of his low arc. Then Cogan fired the second slug. It hit Amato higher, slightly above the belt on the left
side, and went through him, taking an angle through his body which sent it through the glass panel of the door at his left. Cogan fired the third shot as Amato hit the wall of the building and started to sag down. It hit him in the middle of the chest, close to the base of his throat, and blew his chest apart. Amato toppled off to his own right in the low shrubbery.

Cogan backed up fast and got into the car. He shoved the shotgun into the back seat and stuck the key into the ignition. “Now gimme that start,” he said.

The Duster leaped out of the space, taking the curves of the drive with the small tires screaming.

Three and one-half miles from Stuart Manor, Cogan said: “You’re going too fast.”

“Jesus,” Frankie said, “they’re gonna have all kinds of cops up here.” He held the Duster steady at seventy on the two-lane road.

“And one of them’s gonna catch us,” Cogan said. “Slow down.”

“I can’t,” Frankie said.

“Kid,” Cogan said, “look, slow down, all right?”

“I can’t,” Frankie said. “Honest to God, I can’t.”

“Kid,” Cogan said, “my car’s in Massachusetts. We got a long way to go. I don’t wanna get caught.”

“You wanna drive?” Frankie said.

“Yeah,” Cogan said.

Frankie pulled the Duster off on the shoulder of Route 64. He opened the driver’s side door quickly and got out and trotted around the back of the car. Cogan slid across the seats. Frankie got in on the passenger side.

“Okay,” Cogan said, putting the Duster in drive, “now, this means, you’re gonna have to dump the gun.”

“Okay,” Frankie said.

Cogan stopped the Duster on the overpass at the
Shawsheen River in Andover, Massachusetts. Frankie opened the passenger window and launched the gun out into the darkness. He started to close the window.

“Wait,” Cogan said.

There was a splash.

“Okay,” Cogan said. He put the Duster in gear again. “Grass and stuff don’t take care of prints,” he said. “Water does.”

Cogan wheeled the Duster into the parking lot at the Northshore Plaza west of Salem. Behind Jordan Marsh’s there was a blue LTD.

“You know what you got to do, now,” Cogan said, driving toward the LTD.

“Sure,” Frankie said. “I go back down to where my car is and I leave this one and I go home.”

“You just leave it,” Cogan said.

“Oh Christ,” Frankie said, “I wipe it down.”

“You’re all right and everything,” Cogan said.

“
Yeah
,” Frankie said.

“Where’s your car again?” Cogan said.

“For Christ sake,” Frankie said, “it’s down at, it’s inna lot at Auburndale.”

“Just making sure,” Cogan said. “You couldn’t drive right, there. Some times guys forget.”

Cogan pulled the Duster up next to the LTD. The parking lot was lighted, but empty. Cogan opened the driver’s side door. Frankie started sliding across the seat. Cogan got out. Frankie slid into the driver’s seat. He put his hands on the wheel. Cogan held the door handle in his left hand. With his right hand he removed a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight Police Special, two-inch barrel, from beneath his coat.

“You’re gonna remember, now,” Cogan said, holding the revolver below the level of the window.

“I know, I know,” Frankie said, “I dump the fuckin’
car and I get my car and I don’t go too fast and I—”

Cogan raised the revolver and shot Frankie in the face, once. Frankie fell off toward the passenger seat. Cogan leaned in the window and put the muzzle of the revolver against Frankie’s chest and fired four times, the powder blast burning Frankie’s coat. The body shuddered with each shot.

Cogan put the revolver in the pocket of his car coat. He took unlined leather gloves from the other pocket, and a red handkerchief. He began to wipe the Duster down.

I
N THE MIDDLE
of the afternoon, Cogan parked his flame-painted white El Camino pickup beside the silver Toronado in the lot at the Holiday Inn at South Attleboro, Massachusetts. The sign next to the Toronado said: “Welcome, South Jaycees.” Cogan went inside.

In the lounge the driver sat at the bar, dawdling with a large ginger ale. Cogan took the stool next to him.

“You’re late,” the driver said.

“My mother used to tell me that,” Cogan said. “ ‘You’ll be late for your own funeral.’ I hope so.”

“Had yourself quite a party,” the driver said.

“I do the best I can,” Cogan said. To the bartender he said: “Beer.”

The bartender filled a stein with Michelob.

“Everything’s under control now, I take it,” the driver said. “At long last.”

“You know,” Cogan said, “for a guy I’m trying to help out and everything, you’re awful hard to get along with. I could’ve made you drive up to Boston, you know. I hadda go to Framingham, I didn’t have to come down here. I’m trying to be nice to you.”

“What the hell’s wrong in Framingham,” the driver said, “sky falling there or something?”

“Nah,” Cogan said. “Stevie was outa hundred-millimeters and I had his car anyway and he had my truck, so I went out there and met him and give him some. I like to do a guy a favor now and then.”

“Do me a favor,” the driver said. “Never do me any favors. I’ve seen how you work.”

“Tell you what,” Cogan said, “gimme the money.”

The driver handed Cogan a thick white business envelope.

“ ’Scuse me,” Cogan said. He slid off the stool.

“You going to
count
it?” the driver said.

“I gotta take a leak,” Cogan said. “Just lemme alone, all right? You make me nervous. I get nervous, I always gotta take a leak. Have some more ginger ale, for Christ sake.”

Cogan went to the Men’s Room. Cogan returned.

“You feel better?” the driver said.

“No,” Cogan said, “there’s only fifteen in there.”

“Three guys,” the driver said. “I’m not sure, I had to ask him whether I should pay you for the kid or not. He said I should.”

“He was right, too,” Cogan said. “That’s five apiece.”

“Correct,” the driver said. “That’s what he told me to pay Mitch.”

“Yeah,” Cogan said, “but the way I got it, Mitch got inna fight with a whore, the dumb shit, and now they got him in the can. Mitch couldn’t do it. I come through for everybody on short notice. From now on, the price’s ten.”

“Dillon only charges five,” the driver said. “He told me that, too.”

“Not any more,” Cogan said.

“Look,” the driver said, “you’re filling in for Dillon. You get what Dillon gets. No more. Take it up with Dillon. I can’t do anything about it.”

“You can’t do anything about anything,” Cogan said. “None of you guys can. Everything just goes haywire and everything, that’s fine, you need somebody, get things straightened out. I’m just telling you, is all, it’s gonna cost more, now on.”

“Tell Dillon,” the driver said. “Take it up with him.”

“Dillon’s dead,” Cogan said. “Dillon died this morning.”

The driver was silent for a while. Then he said: “He’s going to be sorry to hear that.”

“No sorrier’n I am,” Cogan said.

The driver sipped his ginger ale. “I assume,” he said, “I assume.… What killed him?”

“I know the name of it,” Cogan said. “I got home this morning, my wife left me a note, they took Dillon the hospital about midnight or so. They told me what it was. That’s all I know.”

“He died in the hospital, then,” the driver said.

“Like I say,” Cogan said, “I dunno what it is. All I know’s what they told me. ‘Myocardial infarct.’ You know what that is? I guess it’s the same thing, the heart trouble.”

“That’s what he had,” the driver said. “Well, how about that? Dillon’s dead. Son of a bitch.”

“He wasn’t a bad guy, actually,” Cogan said.

“No,” the driver said, “no, I guess he wasn’t. He wasn’t a bad guy.”

“He always,” Cogan said, “he never, well, I knew Dillon a long time, right? It was Dillon, really, got me started, said I oughta get something besides the booking, something that’d be around and like that, you know? He was the guy that really plugged me in. I knew Dillon a long time.”

“He knew him a long time too,” the driver said. “He had a lot of respect for him.”

“Sure,” Cogan said, “so’d I. You know why?”

“You were afraid of him?” the driver said.

“Nah,” Cogan said. He finished his beer. “Nah, it wasn’t that. It was, he knew the way things oughta be done, right?”

“So I’m told,” the driver said.

“And when they weren’t,” Cogan said, “he knew what to do.”

“And so do you,” the driver said.

“And so do I,” Cogan said.

GEORGE V. HIGGINS
Cogan’s Trade

George V. Higgins was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1939. After several years as a reporter, he obtained a law degree and went on to become Assistant DA in Boston. Later as a reporter, he encountered the New England underworld that was to become a source for his novels. He was the author of numerous bestsellers—including
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
,
Cogan’s Trade
,
The Rat on Fire
, and
The Digger’s Game
.