Killers (15 page)

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 got 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.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked.

Bobby Bones said, “The reason I hear about it is—you remember that kid, the Fonz, Peanuts' nephew?”

The Fonz was in for attempted extortion. He'd been collecting bad debts for one of his uncle's bookies, and he'd left a death threat on some mark's voice mail. I'm not saying he's the only guy who's ever done something that stupid, but most times, it gets straightened out, or pleaded out, before it goes to trial.

Bobby Bones said, “The Fonz checked out of here last week. He had some song-and-dance about a state grand jury after some motorcycle gang up in Beachmont that was running a meth lab and he was just gonna take the contempt citation 'cause it's concurrent on the extortion beef. He tells us they're sending him to Otisville to throw him in the hole. Like he's a fuckin' martyr, a stand-up guy, but that's bullshit.”

“How can you be sure?”

Bobby Bones grinned again. “My brother Billy's got someone in records up in Otisville there. I asked him to check, just to satisfy my own curiousity. The Fonz ain't gettin' thrown in no hole, he ain't even going to Otisville, he's going into WITSEC. He's cooperating.”

Gonzo Ronzo had drifted back over. He was still standing up, listening to us talk.

“This is worse than I thought,” I said. Everybody who was anybody in Eastie appeared to be in jeopardy, which usually meant they would be ready to take some chances. They had to lay in some dough—not for lawyers, nobody paid for their own lawyers anymore. What was the point? If the feds get you on tape, you have a better chance of hitting the Lottery than beating the rap. It's better to save the money and give it to your family. Indigent is one of those words that no wiseguy ever heard of until maybe ten years ago.

Nowadays, when you get pinched, the first thing you say is not “I want to make my phone call.” The first thing you say is “I'm indigent.”

Bobby Bones shook his head. “If Peanuts was wired, Bench, and I guarantee he was, it'll be a giant cluster-fuck for all you guys up there. It's almost enough to make me glad I'm in here for another thirty-two years. Almost.”

 

14

A TOUGH STREET KID FROM LINCOLN

Even though I'm in politics, sort of, I don't buy the
Globe
anymore, me and 300,000 other former subscribers, and 450,000 on Sundays. Why support assholes who are trying to destroy me, and everybody like me? But I still read it, online, at least the stories they don't charge for. If they try to force me to sign up for the “free thirty-day trial,” I'm outta there.

I always read the
Herald
first, but this morning, after making quick work of the “feisty tabloid,” I went over to bostonglobe.com. Nothing much struck my fancy there either, until I saw the headline on Ted McGee's piss-poor column: “Underworld mayhem: casinos' first casualties.”

So now it starts, the public-relations war against the casino bill. The
Globe
's reasonable-doubt-at-a-reasonable-price columnist was making the pitch against casinos, on the grounds that the hoodlums were already littering the sidewalks with victims as they fought for control.

“The EMT looked down at the crumpled body of the young Dominican curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the front seat of his stolen SUV on Winter Hill in Somerville.

“‘Another gang war,'” the EMT was saying. “‘Comes as regular as clockwork around here. And this time you know what it's about…'”

As always, the EMT—or cop, or hero jake, or whoever—had no last name. This time, he didn't even have a first name. Because of course there was no EMT. Ted McGee was a fraud. He wasn't a tough street kid from Boston; he was from Lincoln. He also wasn't a Vietnam vet and he wasn't a reporter; he was a shakedown artist. He was so damn authentic he called Boston Beantown at least once per column.

I went back to the column, where the EMT was delivering more salt-of-the-earth Joe Sixpack wisdom.

“‘These pols on Beacon Hill don't care what happens on the streets. They've never been on the street.'” Neither had Ted McGee, as far as I could tell, unless maybe it was Brattle Street in Cambridge. Now it was time for some hard-boiled narrative to break up the made-up quotes, probably lifted from an out-of-print paperback collection of Jimmy Breslin or Jimmy Cannon columns.

“This double-slaying had all the earmarks of Bench McCarthy's mob.” Funny, the way I'd heard it, the Dominican and his P.O. pal had been chasing Bench. “Bench is a guy who operates out of a Winter Hill bar, the Alibi, where the first shot is on the house and after that you have to use your own bullets.” If he were still alive, Johnny Carson could have sued for plagiarism. “They are merely the latest victims in what will be a long and bloody struggle to control the pols' latest misguided boondoggle to generate more revenue. A few days earlier, Sally Cuarto, the plug-ugly who rules the North End with an iron fist, saw his nephew gunned down at an after-hours card game. Then his consigliere was blown up. This war is just getting started.”

Sally Cuarto? The tough street kid from Lincoln couldn't even spell the underboss's name right? And nobody on the city or the copy desk picked up on it? You can bet the
Globe
never misspells Barney Frank's name.

I had almost reached the bottom of the page. That meant it was time for the nameless EMT to return with one final, jarring pearl of wisdom.

“‘Nobody'll see Bench now until it's over. He's gone to the mattresses.'” Now he was lifting a line from
The Godfather
. “‘There will be a lot of mothers wearing black, a lot of funerals in Beantown before this casino war is over, but what do the solons care? All they're looking for is their next payoff.'”