Killers (28 page)

All this was right out in the open. I guess Bench didn't keep a lot of secrets from the boys, at least if they didn't involve something that could lead to something that would land his ass in a document that began, “The United States of America versus…” Patty stood up and they did another major lip-lock, like it was prom night at reform school. However, the timing didn't seem right to tell them to get a room. So I held my own mud.

With Hobart behind her, Patty sashayed out of the Abili, every male eyeball in the house following her. Obviously Bench didn't mind; she was yet another confirmation of his status as the alpha male in these here parts.

After Patty and Hobart were gone Bench told the just-arrived fill-in bartender to turn the outside lights back on, including the flashing beer light in the smaller, side front window that wasn't covered by steel plates. It had somehow been spared in the fusillade; Central American armies have never been renowned for their marksmanship, or anything else for that matter.

“Never let 'em see you sweat” were apparently a few more of Bench's words to live by. But Bench wasn't taking too many chances. Just inside the door, out of sight from the sidewalk, he had one of his guys in a captain's chair, a sawed-off shotgun on his lap, covered by a beach towel. Of course you may be thinking that possession of a sawed-off shotgun is a felony in America. But we weren't in America, we were in Somerville. And Bench apparently hadn't gotten the memo from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives.

On the other side of the front door from the sawed-off shotgun, on the last bar stool in the corner, sat another guy. His stool was turned toward the door, and on the bar in front of him was what looked like a pregnant
Herald.
It bulged out because it was on top of a 9-mm Glock. The odds of the East Boston crew reappearing tonight were slim, but like the Boy Scout he'd never been, Bench preferred to Be Prepared.

He walked over to the booth and noticed where I was sitting, looking north, toward the door.

“Mind switching over to the other side of the booth with me?” he asked. “I like to be able to see the door—it's just one of my little, uh, peccadilloes.”

I stood up and made the change. Bench slid into the other side and then slapped a .38 revolver on the table. “You understand?” he said and I nodded. I understood.

“Tell me more about this Mikey Tickets,” he said.

“I don't know much, just that he's on his way back.”

“Is he on the bus?”

“I'm not sure, but my understanding is, they're not trying to bust his balls.”

“If you're on the bus, they're busting your balls.” He took a deep breath; he looked quite beat, which was understandable, considering. Watching him, I noticed something small and shiny reflecting in his hair. It took me a second to realize it was a tiny sliver of glass. I averted my eyes quickly before he spoke.

“You know there's more than one grand jury,” he said. “What's your interest in this hack?”

“He used to work at Santo's.”

Bench nodded. “Seems like all roads lead to Santo's. But what's this got to do with me?”

“What's this got to do with you?” I asked. “How about, you don't get shot.”

“Too late for that. They've already been shooting at me.”

He wasn't exactly a font of information, but there were certain steps that Bench could take to put an end to this that I couldn't. So my job here was to provide him with enough information to get the ball rolling. How he got the mission accomplished, that really wasn't my concern, or my clients'. So I didn't think I had a lot to lose by leveling with him, at least up to a point.

I asked him if he'd known who owned the Python, and he shook his head. He was tapping his fingers on the table, as if he were trying to recall something or somebody else.

“It's interesting, that name Marzilli,” he said, “but sometimes one and one don't add up to two, they add up to three, or four. I can't take anything for granted. Could be instead of the way you're laying it out, somebody's out to knock off me and the other guy and the casino bill is the decoy, instead of the other way around. You follow me?” He rubbed his eyes, as if he'd been up for twenty-four hours, although I doubted very much he rolled out of bed before noon.

“What I can't figure out,” Bench said, “is why wouldn't all of these casino people want this bill to pass? Way I got it figured is, if you have to post a bond to build a $500 million casino, there has to be plenty of money to go around. More than enough for everybody. Am I right?”

I shook my head. “Not everybody gets a license. In fact, most of them don't. The problem is, there's only three casino licenses up for grabs, one of which is set aside for the Indians. They cut the state into three districts, and if the law's passed then the new Gaming Commission decides which applicant in which district gets the license.”

He nodded. He still read the newspapers. “Seems like it'd be a lot cheaper, not to mention less trouble, just to bribe those guys for a license. How many are there?”

“Five, but they all answer to the politicians who appointed them.”

“In other words, they're bagmen is what you're telling me.”

“That's one way to put it, I suppose.”

“Is there any other way to put it?”

“Not really,” I said, “now that I think about it.”

He smiled weakly. “This has to end, one way or the other, and as far as my friends and I are concerned, it only ends one way.”

“That's the way we feel too.”

“Well, we feel it a little stronger, if you know what I mean. This thing is costing your people a lot of money. But you can always get more money. They're trying to kill us.” He took a dog-eared business card out of his shirt pocket, turned it over and wrote a number on the back, then pushed it across the table at me.

“Memorize that number,” he said. “You need to reach me, that's the number to call.”

He let me watch it five or so seconds longer, then pulled it back and returned it to his pocket.

“Do you want mine?” I said.

“Nah,” he said. “I have a feeling you'll be needing to call me before I need to call you.”

 

27

SALLY SINGS THE BLUES

I met Sally at Carson Beach the next morning. I came by myself. After last night, he was again accompanied by a driver/bodyguard, a guy I'd never seen before. I explained the situation to him, as it had been explained to me. He was not happy.

“So Blinky's cousins or some such shit own Santo's, and you think he should get hit over that?”

“I'm just putting the facts on the record, Sally. It's your call.”

I didn't mention my theory about how Blinky was going to blame me for killing Sally, which would set me up for my own Rossetti's send-off. I wanted Sally to regard me as a disinterested observer.

“Are you telling me some fuckin' assholes are usin' me for target practice to kill a bill?” he said, his voice rising. “This ain't even about the rackets?”

“Don't take it personally, Sally. It's just that people recognize our names. If they want to scare off the legislature, they need names that the public will recognize.”

“Fuck the public,” he said. “Two more killed last night in Maverick Square. Spics. Spics killing spics, not usually one of my big worries. It's on the metro front of the
Globe
.” He yelled over to his driver, who brought over the paper, which I thought Sally had said he didn't read. The guy passed it over to Sally, who handed it to me. I scanned it quickly—two guys in a parked car. No IDs, no licenses, no plates on the car. They weren't any of our guys, that much was for sure.

“Coulda been anything, Sally,” I said. “Drugs, most likely.”

Sally shook his head. “Do you believe in Santa Claus too? Look, if what you're saying is true, they need more bodies. I'm totally shut down. I finally told everybody, fuck it, go to Florida 'til this thing blows over. Of course, they'd already fuckin' screwed anyway, so I might as well stay ahead of the curve. It ain't as much of a problem for you. The spics look more conspicuous in your areas.”

Except for Castle Island here, Sally hasn't been to any of my areas lately, or if he has, he hasn't been paying enough attention. The whole world is turning into Greater Chelsea. Revere is tottering. Shirley Avenue looks like Dot Ave, which looks like Saigon.

“Here's what I wanna do,” he said. “I'm gonna tell everybody to come back from Florida. We're gonna start taking these people down. They wanna war, they're gonna get a war.”

Yeah, and I knew who was going to be the one to fight it. To quote Sally himself, his guys couldn't find their way off Hanover Street. Steroids, cocaine, cannolis—they were as worthless as tits on a bull. A war was just what I didn't need. There were too many conspicuous spics, and only one of me.

“Sally, let me explain it to you again. These people that killed your nephew, that killed Hole in the Head and Vito, that have tried twice now to kill me—these guys want a war. You start one with them and they win.”

“Hey pal, I got news for you. They kill us, they win too.” He took a cigar and a small cutter out of his topcoat. He tried to cut off the top of the cigar, but his hands were shaking. He looked up at me in embarrassment, pocketed the cigar and cutter and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. He lit one, and after a couple of puffs, he started talking again. “Besides, I been thinking, if this ‘war' so-called kills the casino legislation, maybe we can cut ourselves in next year.”

“Sally,” I said. “Are you fuckin' nuts? I thought we agreed on this. This isn't Vegas 1965. The Rat Pack ain't walkin' through that door. We can get some short-money shit, but nobody's cutting us in on a counting-room skim, and you know it. These are publicly traded corporations. They got security, they got surveillance cameras, they got lawyers, this ain't like shaking down a bookie. We'd have better odds going back to robbing banks.”

“That was your thing,” he pointed out. “You were the stick-up guy.”

“And you know why I quit—'cause everything had changed. Cops can scramble too fast. Takes big balls to walk into a bank, always did. Now it takes big balls and small brains—it ain't worth it. Twenty-five, thirty grand, and they hit you with thirty years on and after just for the machine gun.”

“We ain't talking about robbing banks, we're talking about being shot at,” he said. “They're using us as, whattayacallit, props, in their own fucking movie. We gotta fight back.”

I shook my head.

“Sally, you're not listening to me. Somebody put these people up to this. Me and this kid from City Hall, we seen Denis Donahue, the senator, he's gonna be the president next year, we seen him over on Bennington Street in Santo's there.”

“So we hit him too.”

“Are you crazy?”

Sally sighed and threw his cigarette over the seawall onto the beach. He sagged, then walked over and slumped onto a bench. I followed and sat down beside him.

“I just got so much on my mind.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. Something had to be wrong, because he wasn't screaming at me, telling me to tell myself to go fuck myself. I knew better than to ask him anything. Whatever he wanted to say, he'd get around to it, in his own way. Finally he did.

“It's Liz,” he said. “She's been coming 'round the Dog House yellin' at me—in front of the boys. You can't slap a broad around no more. Look how many State Police get busted these days. If a statie can't slap a broad around, who can? I just have to sit there, taking it, and she fuckin' yells.”

He tries to use me to set her up, I can't make it because I almost buy the farm, and now he's singing the blues, to me of all people. But I had to keep up my end of the conversation.

“What's she yell about?”

“How the hell do I know? It's shit that don't mean nothing. She thinks I was talking to some other broad, I forgot her birthday, one of the boys didn't take her car in for a tune-up, before her car got repo'ed that is. Who the fuck knows? It's a different thing every day, all married-type shit. You think I need two wives? One is too many. Way too many. And since when do you have to remember your girlfriend's birthday? They must have fuckin' changed the rules on that one too.”

I thought about Patty. Someday she was going to put the full-court press on me.

“Anything I can do?” I asked, then realized I didn't mean that. “You know, talk to her, something like that.”

“Nah,” he said, finally looking up at me. “This here's something I gotta handle on my own.”

I told him I'd make my rounds and report back.

“Okay,” he said. “I'll see you tonight at the Café Ravenna. Eight o'clock. I still owe you dinner.”

Jesus, I'd thought I was past that land mine. Sally was giving Blinky a pass, but he still wanted to whack Liz. I wondered how I could get out of the dinner tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that.

 

28

A BUG AT B.B. BENNIGAN'S

I was in the waiting room in Caulfield's office on Park Street. The old man was meeting with another group of clients, this time Chinese. Finally they left, bowing all the way out the door, and I was ushered in.

“Global economy's working out for you?” I asked him.

“They pay more than my … traditional clients, let's put it that way, young man,” he said sourly. “The problem with my American clients is, they actually expect me to deliver.”

I filled him in on what I'd learned. I told him about Bench McCarthy, and about the probation commissioner, and their trip to the Python in East Boston.

“You actually went to East Boston,” he said. “I'm impressed, Mr. Reilly. That's what I call legwork.”