Killers (2 page)

“Please, who you kiddin'?” he said. “These guys I got now, most of 'em couldn't find their way off Hanover Street.” The words were coming faster now, in a rush. “They lift weights, they think they're tough. They take steroids, they think they're mean. I don't need tough guys, I need intelligent tough guys. This is your problem too, you understand? They come after me like this, they'll come after you too.”

“What about the cops?” I said. “They gotta be all over this one like stink on shit. It's a lot safer workin' a homicide down the North End than in Grove Hall. What are they telling you?”

“Cops.” Sally spit out the words and his face got red. I knew what was coming next. Whenever he got really angry, something snapped in his brain, and suddenly the guy he was pissed at wasn't there anymore, even if in fact he was. Suddenly Sally would be screaming, giving you a message to deliver to … yourself. I'd been through this countless times, getting yelled at and threatened, once removed. I called it “going Sally.” Now he was going Sally on me.

“Listen, you tell that fuckin' mick,” he said, staring at me, that fuckin' mick, “he knows better'n to ask me about cops. Cops don't do shit, except come around at Christmas with their hands out. And he knows it. So you tell that fuckin' kid that by noon they'll be coming 'round his places, asking him if he knows anything. That's their idea of an investigation. That kid, he knows I got nobody no more, he shouldna oughta make me beg. This is like the fuckin' army, yes sir and no sir. You fuckin' tell him that. You tell him I said so.”

I just stood there. The first time it happened, in state prison in Walpole, I was petrified. Of course I was only about eighteen years old. Now, I just waited for him to come out of his trance. Finally he blinked and shook his head and lit another cigarette. It was over. Afterward, I don't think he even remembered what he'd said, but I had never asked him.

He leaned in close to me. A tear ran down his cheek. This was something new. “Please, Bench, I can't take it, I ain't never gonna hear the end of this until these fucking punks are dead. And I don't mean disappearin' them, burying them down on Tenean Beach like you done with them ass-clowns from Charlestown. I want these motherfuckers' bodies found, hopefully fuckin' trussed, so's I can show my wife and my fuckin' sister-in-law the newspaper, with the pictures of their bodies on the front page. Drop 'em on the street if you have to, but what I really want is for you to fucking hog-tie 'em and leave 'em in the trunk at the long-term parking lot at Logan. I wanna see a quote in the
Herald
that says, ‘They died hard.' You gotta pay some cop to say that, send me the bill,
capisce
?”

“How much did they get?” I asked.

“They got shit is what they got,” he said, his voice rising again. “A million fucking drug dealers in this city they could be robbin' and they go after my game, which I'm running strictly for Auld Lang Syne.” He lit another cigarette. “Listen, I'm serious, I wanna see the punks' car on the front page of the paper, and I wanna see the blood oozing out of the trunk, in color. Brown. Not red, brown, like it turned into pus, it was there for days, stinking up the garage, their faces turning into pudding. I want the cops saying somebody smelled the bodies—”

“Wrong season, Sally,” I said. “The best I can do for you this time of year is ‘They died hard.' Listen, I still don't get why they shot your nephew.”

“They're fucking junkies is why. Who knows? Something went wrong. You know how it goes.”

“But you don't believe that, do you, Sally?”

“Why do you think I called Cheech?” He was yelling again now. “If it's a robbery, they can get a lot more money than hitting one of my games.”

“What color were these guys?” A very important question, and one that would never be answered on the radio or TV or in the papers unless they were white, which I doubted.

“Spics, more'n likely. They had accents, or the one who was speaking did. Sometimes they use guys fresh off the boat, can't even speak English yet.”

Just like in the old days, but I didn't say that. “You think somebody's trying to send you a message, Sally?”

“Send us a message you mean. You're in with us now too, remember? Partner.”

He had a point. That was the agreement we'd worked out, after the last “war,” after all the wannabes were taken care of, mostly by what the newspapers called “the Somerville mob.” Ever since then it was supposed to be one for all and all for one, and although we hadn't spelled it out formally, if the shooting started, I was the one for all.

As we walked, I suddenly heard someone running toward us from behind. It was Cheech. He had a cell phone in hand, the old-fashioned flip kind, not an iPhone.

“Boss,” he said, “it's your wife. She wants to talk to you.”

Sally looked over at me pleadingly. “Will you talk to her, Bench? Please. Tell her we're doing what we can.”

“Sally,” I said. “I thought we had an understanding. If we got business to discuss, we do it here, so nobody can record nothing.”

Sally nodded and took the phone from Cheech. “Yes, dear … I'm with that guy we talked about … the one with the dead eyes, that's right.” He looked over at me and shrugged. “Rossetti's of course, as soon as it's nine I'll call him.”

Rossetti's was the Mafia funeral home in the North End.

“Don't worry, hon, tell Carmela we're working on it.”

He handed the phone back to Cheech and waved him away. Cheech looked disappointed that he couldn't stick around and put his two cents in. But he followed instructions and lumbered off, looking slightly lopsided with the shotgun under his right armpit. The beach was deserted, so he had nobody to even scowl at, let alone blast. Meanwhile Sally lit a new cigarette off his old one.

“We don't need this shit,” he said. “Not right now, not with the casino bill coming up and all.”

They'd been working on it for years, the hacks at the State House, but this time it looked like they finally had the skids greased. Three casinos, one of which was reserved for the moribund racetracks in East Boston. The enabling legislation had already passed the House, and now it was pending in the Senate. Maybe we couldn't run things like the syndicate used to back in the good old days in Las Vegas, but with that much dough on the table, all we needed were scraps, the stuff on the margins. Laundry, the parking concessions, control of the booze and food deliveries through our Teamster locals, the hooker bars around the corner from the dice tables and the one-armed bandits, a little shylocking.…

For once the state getting into gambling might pay off for us.

Better than drugs, that went without saying. Drugs are a rat magnet; that's why the old-timers hated drugs, not for any moral reasons. The goombahs understood instinctively that the draconian mandatory-minimum sentences would turn everybody into snitches. Anybody could do three months in the House of Correction on a state gambling beef. But on Class B controlled substances the feds were locking up wiseguys and throwing away the key. Plus lately they're dropping the real f-bomb—forfeitures. If you were high up, like me and Sally, you needed buffers, at least two levels of buffers, because once your dealers start getting busted, they topple like dominoes, and your whole organization turns into a fucking deli, every last one of them standing in line, waiting to take a number to rat you out.…

Drug kingpins. That's what they would call me and Sally if they ever got the chance. Not to mention career criminals.

If we get a casino, maybe we can start weeding out the junkies. Maybe.

Just then we saw another car pulling up, a black Cadillac Escalade. It was Blinky Marzilli, another legend in his own mind. He fancied himself the East Boston captain. He jumped out of his car, ran up to Sally and first hugged him, then kissed him on both cheeks. Sally looked embarrassed. I was amused. I have a theory about these guinea greetings—the more emotive the hood is, the more likely he is to eventually end up in the Witness Security Program. It's like they're overcompensating, in advance.

I'd heard stories about Blinky, but nothing I could ever pin down. He'd been an “unindicted coconspirator” in a chop-shop indictment in Revere a couple of years back. One “unindicted coconspirator,” you get a mulligan on. A second one, they put out a contract on you. At least I do.

Blinky had brought along his muscle, such as it was, another nitwit named Benny Eggs. I think he got the nickname because he has the IQ of a soft-boiled egg. He was sniffling, another bad sign in my book. I don't believe in colds anymore, not since cocaine came in.

As Benny Eggs looked on, Blinky shook my hand, then turned his attention back to Sally.

“From my lips to God's ears,” he said, raising his left hand, “whatever I got is yours. I'll help you get those dirty motherfucking spics.”

“Sally,” I said, “how sure are we that these were spics?”

“That's what the dealer said. Charlie the Greek. He's been with me for years.”

“I already got my spics out there beating the bushes.” Blinky still lived in East Boston, even though it had tipped years earlier. The old white neighborhood was receding at the rate of two or three blocks a year, north toward Orient Heights and Winthrop. The Eastie state rep, an Italian of course, now wore long-sleeve shirts year-round so no one would see his tattoos. Two years ago he'd only gotten fifty-two percent of the vote in the primary against a guy named Ramirez. Eastie was on the verge of slipping into the past tense.

“I'm putting Vinny and his partner Fat Vinny on it too,” Blinky said.

I know those guys. Let me tell you, if the killers were hiding in a meatball at Santarpio's, Vinny and Fat Vinny would find them for sure.

“We'll get 'em Sally,” Blinky said. “We gotta get 'em. This here is a, a…”

“A provocation?” I suggested.

“Yeah, that's it, a provocation. You always come up with the right word, Bench.”

“I caught up on my reading at Lewisburg,” I said.

A couple of toothless tigers in scally caps were slowly hobbling towards us now. The only weapons they were carrying were canes, but I saw Cheech giving them the evil eye.

I looked at Sally. “We ought to get moving,” I said, and Sally and Blinky nodded, after which Benny Eggs nodded. I couldn't see Cheech from where I was, but I had a feeling his trigger finger was getting itchy under the raincoat.

I watched them all leave, then sat down on a park bench and got out my cell phone. I called a detective I knew in Area A-1. I told him I'd meet him at Lupo's, a bucket of blood on Harrison Avenue in Chinatown, after the shift change. I asked him to bring along whatever he had on the murder, including photos.

“Pictures?” he said. “I don't know about that.”

“C'mon, I just want to look at them, I don't want to keep them.” He'd bring them. He was on my pad.

I got to Lupo's first and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was sorry my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Places like Lupo's are why people get phobias about germs. I ordered a Bud—in a bottle, hold the glass.

The detective came in around fifteen minutes later, a bulky manila envelope under his arm. He slid into the booth across from me and ordered two double shots of Old Overholt rye with a Heineken chaser. Apparently I was buying. He opened the envelope, pulled out the reports and the photos, and pushed them across the table towards me, after first checking to make sure there was nothing wet on the tabletop, or even worse, sticky.

“We get these homicides almost every other night now, you know,” the cop said. “Only difference is, this dead guy is white.”

“Pretty big difference, wouldn't you say?”

“I guess it is, if it's Sally Curto's nephew.”

“Were they spics?”

“Who knows? They were wearing gloves, masks, somebody said they had accents, but what the hell does that mean nowadays? Could be Russians, could be Iranians, hell, they could even surprise us all and be citizens.”

“Why'd they shoot the kid?”

“He mouthed off to 'em, near as we can tell. Found three packets of coke in his coat pocket. And some Vicodin and Oxys. He was so high he thought he was bulletproof, that's what the witnesses say. They're not going to tell Sally that, of course. One more thing: I believe he may have also asked the eternal question.”

Do you know who I am? I shook my head. Working a door while you're snorting coke was bad enough, but then to try to pull rank on guys who've got the drop on you …

“I got only one thing of interest for you,” he said. “One of the guns was a Walther PPK. We got the shell casings.”

I took a swig of my beer. “James Bond's gun. I wonder where they stole it from.”

“Reason I mention it is, it ain't like the old days, when guys got rid of a piece as soon as they used it, especially in a murder. Might keep your eyes open, I know we are. I wouldn't be surprised to see it turn up again. These illegals get a nice semi-automatic like that, easy to get ammo for, a real one too, not some Hungarian knockoff, they'll never get rid of it. They don't give a shit about anything.”

“Why should they?” The former state attorney general had once said, “Technically, it is not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.” She wasn't kidding. Anything goes wrong, some bleeding heart judge gives them bail and they're on the next plane out of Logan back to whatever Third World hellhole they came from until the heat dies down.

I caught the bartender's eye and motioned for another round.

“So is it spics?” I asked.

“In the Boston Police Department, we are only interested in apprehending criminals, not in the race, national origin or immigration status of said perpetrators.”