Killers (37 page)

“You'd have to ask them,” I said, and Evans stared right back at me.

“You wiseguys think you're so tough,” he said. “But the other guy never gets a chance to fire back at you, do they? You kill 'em in cold blood, as far as I can see.”

I looked over at McKenna, to see if he wanted to correct the record, but he just lowered his eyes and stared at the floor.

“Captain Evans,” I said, “I got shot at just the other night, right outside this door here.”

“So I heard,” he said. “And a few days earlier you killed the two guys who were firing at you further up on Broadway.”

I looked at him carefully. He wasn't as dumb as I'd thought he was. He was trying to get me all hot and bothered enough to admit to shooting the guys at the top of the hill. A real long shot, but he got points for trying.

“I don't know what happened there in Ball Square, only what I saw on TV.”

“I'll bet,” he said.

I made a mental note to myself to make myself some more friends on the BPD. You know what I mean by friends. In Roxbury, I had a few uniforms from B-2 on the pad, but that was more for on-street parking outside the garage—keeping the meter maids at bay—as well as the occasional “tip” to the building inspectors from City Hall. But a few envelopes at Christmas don't even begin to cover handling a drive-by machine-gun shooting.

“Where'd you say you spent the night again last night?” Evans asked.

“Sparhawk Street, Brighton,” I repeated, yet again.

“Anybody with you?”

“Nobody you know.”

Evans glanced over at McKenna, who spoke up. “Answer the question, Bench.”

“My girlfriend, Patty.”

The Boston cop looked over at McKenna. “You know her?”

“If he says she was there, she was there.”

“You mean, she'll say she was there.” Evans really didn't like me. This was not an act. “How old is she?”

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen,” he repeated, “and you're what, forty-five?”

“Forty-four, thanks for asking.”

“How'd you meet her?” he asked.

“Babysitting,” I said.

 

40

 … NEVER NOD WHEN YOU CAN WINK

I really didn't hold out a lot of hope that I was going to get anything more out of the bug at B.B. Bennigan's. For all I knew, either management or the feds had already found it, and yanked it out. It was about 3:30 when I parked in the alley around back from the barroom. I thought about going in and checking it, but the bartender might recognize me. Didn't seem worth the risk. Who knew who was in there now? Somebody might be waiting for me.

I halfheartedly turned on the receiver, and much to my surprise I picked up the sound of muffled voices, from nearby booths. I'd gotten lucky. I had batteries enough too, so I settled in for a wait until—knock on wood—the senator and, if I was really lucky, the commissioner arrived. A meter maid came by a half hour or so later, but she lost interest in her quota from City Hall after I gave her forty bucks. It was cheaper than a ticket, and I could put it on my cheat sheet.

Around 4:30, I heard a voice clearly ordering drinks. VO and water. It was the senator. He ordered two, which meant the commissioner was on the way. He arrived about five minutes later.

“I got the letter today,” the commissioner said.

“The letter?”

“The target letter.” He sounded exasperated. “From the grand jury.”

“I thought they'd told you you were okay,” said Donuts.

“I thought they did too. You can't trust these motherfuckers.”

They continued on in that maudlin vein for a couple of minutes, the commissioner bemoaning his fate, the senator futilely trying to change the subject. He wasn't getting indicted, so why should he care about anybody else? I could have told him, he was playing with fire now. The commissioner would soon be needing someone to trade up, and the next Senate president would make a nice catch for the G-men, much more impressive than a crooked commissioner appointed by a lame duck governor. The more I listened to Donuts, the dumber I realized he was. Whoever he was working for, Donuts was so eager to please them that he wasn't thinking straight, which involves looking out for number one.

“Listen,” Donuts said, “my people still want some results.”

“Christ, Denis, I gotta handle this other thing? I gotta get a lawyer, a real lawyer.”

“You need money for a lawyer, and the best way to get money is to fucking finish the job.”

“Finish the job? You wanted some bodies; well, you got some bodies now. Them guys aren't as over the hill as we thought they were. Two of them that got killed were my guys.”

“Two fewer witnesses against you. Look on the bright side.”

“Easy for you to say.” He paused. “I got another problem too. That guy, the one that's been feeding us the info on Sally, he says we still owe him. And you know what his end is: we have to take out either Sally or the other guy.”

Name, please, I need a name. But there was silence. I would have bet that the commissioner was doing the math in his head—how many years would he have to do if he reeled in Mr. President? Could a suspended sentence still be in the cards? House arrest?

“That's one guy I guess we can't afford to cross,” Donuts said. “You said on the phone that he'd come up with a plan.”

“I don't like talking here, I don't trust this place after what happened. Let's go outside.”

Oh, let's not and say we did.

“What if they got a wire in here?” the commissioner asked.

“Are you fuckin' soft? You got a target letter today. I oughta be worrying about you.”

Crooks starting to turn on one another. Who could have ever predicted this?

Donuts said, “Do you have a plan, or do I have to find somebody else?”

I could hear the commissioner chuckle, but not happily. “Good luck with that,” he said. “And thanks for your sympathy. But anyway, yeah, I do have a plan.” He paused for a second. I was on the edge of my seat. So was the senator, I presumed. “I had to get some real shooters this time. Cost me a bundle too.”

“Put it on my tab.”

“Damn right I will. Anyway, you know Sally's got a son, the kid's about half a retard, to keep him busy his father bought him a gas station down on Cambridge Street, back side of the hill, about two blocks from MGH. You know the place?”

“Wrong side of the hill,” the senator said, archly.

“Whatever, the kid parks every day in the alley behind the place, leaves around five, I don't know where he goes, it ain't important, because he ain't going anywhere tonight. These guys I brought in, they ice-picked one of his tires, they're watching, waiting for him to come out. When he's on his back jacking up the tire, they shoot him.”

“We need the old man, not his nitwit kid. Besides, it's a gas station, he'll have one of his guys change the tires.”

“Listen to me—all we need is ten seconds. We don't kill him, we just wound him, grab him, hold him down and shoot him in the kneecaps, that's what I told them to do. It's two blocks from Mass General, that's where they'll take him. They'll call the old man, and he'll come running. You know the circular drive there, that's the emergency entrance. When Sally jumps out of the car, we're waiting for him.”

“At Mass General? You're gonna plug Sally Curto right there at the hospital?”

“Is there a better place? You wanted headlines, this'll get you some headlines. Ted McGee can go crazy in the paper. Crime out of control, brazen gangsters, one of the greatest hospitals in the world—”

“How you gonna know when Sally gets to MGH?”

“Leave that to me, okay?”

I listened a couple more minutes, but they had downshifted into innocuous conversation, innocuous to me anyway. I'm sure the commissioner was worried about his target letter, but he'd have to find himself a quarter and call somebody who cared.

I had to find Bench McCarthy real fast.

 

41

JASON TAKES ONE FOR THE TEAM

I got to the garage in Roxbury around five. As I'd anticipated, the District 2 uniforms assigned to the “crime scene” weren't giving us nearly as much attitude as the plainclothesmen from headquarters. The uniforms had been around with the local detectives in the morning before I arrived, and now Rocco was going to have to refill the beer machine.

“Boy, boss, them guys sure know how to drink,” he said.

“As long as they pay,” I said. That was my own little joke, cops paying.

“One of 'em wanted to know when you was gonna put 'Gansett back in there.”

I laughed. “Must have been an old-timer. A detective, right?”

“How'd you know?”

“Who else remembers 'Gansett? I heard that's what Wimpy used to stock the cooler with when he owned this place.”

“Wimpy Bennett.” Rocco said it wistfully. “You got a mighty early start, boss. Especially for a guy who ain't even from Roxbury.”

“Wherever I am,” I said, “is Roxbury.”

I walked back to my office. Just outside, some of the boys were playing hearts. I like that, at least they aren't on their fucking iPhones or some such waste of time. I'm old-fashioned that way. I asked Peppa if I could see him alone, and he turned his hand over to one of the younger guys, an Italian from Hyde Park. I closed the door behind him and turned on WBZ, the all-news radio station. It's always harder to pick up voices if there are more of them in the room, instead of music.

He sat down across from me and I pushed the humidor across the desk and offered him a cigar. He shook his head.

“Nice piece of work last night,” I said.

“That's what Uncle Sam trained me for,” he said.

“How come you didn't put in your twenty years?” I asked.

“You pay better,” he said.

Just then my cell phone rang. I looked at the number. For a second it didn't ring a bell, but then it did. The private dick. No introductions, the way it should be. Just start talking.

“Does Sally have a son with a gas station?”

I sat straight up. “What about it?”

“They're gonna shoot the kid, and then when the old man goes to MGH, they're gonna hit him as he goes in.”

I stood up. I was already trying to figure out the quickest way into the city.

“Who are the shooters?”

“I don't know. The commish said he had to pay a lot more for them.”

“You sure about this?”

“I'm just telling you what I heard on that thing. One other thing. Donuts asked him, how's he gonna know when Sally gets there, and the commish said, ‘Leave that to me.' What's that mean?”

I thought of all the people who might be driving him. It could be any of them. Sally had become a Mafia Macbeth, those he moved moved only in command, nothing in love. I'd never trusted any of them. I couldn't prove anything, but I had to let Sally know what he was walking into.

“You got a piece with you?” I asked Reilly. “Just say yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Can you get down to the hospital and hang around the emergency room?”

“There's gonna be at least two of them and only one of me.” He didn't sound scared, he was just figuring the odds in his own head.

“Is it a throw-down?”

“It's registered,” he said.

I decided to change the subject.

“They always got hospital cops there, you know, making sure nobody blocks the emergency lanes for the ambulances. These shooters are going to stick out like sore thumbs. Once you make 'em, you can tell the cops they're packing.”

“I don't know.” He sounded doubtful. Again, not scared exactly, just dubious. Probably figured the rent-a-cops wouldn't give a shit. They might roust him instead of the shooters. He would know better than me how they would react, being one of them. Come to think of it, one night about a month ago, I was coming out of Ox Kennedy's taproom in Quincy Market when I saw a gangbanger aimlessly wandering around with a knife in his hand. A plunging knife, the kind that you wear like brass knuckles, only you've got a three or four-inch blade in your palm. Push daggers, they call them. Only good for one thing, stabbing somebody. You have to understand that the fucking knife people are crazier than gun nuts. The reason they carry knives is they're so far gone they can't get a gun permit. Those knife people scare the shit out of me. You never want to get shanked, believe me.

Anyway, this night at Quincy Market, I saw a cop and told him about the gangbanger with the knife. He gave me a dirty look.

“What the fuck you want me to do?” he said.

Reilly said, “You still there?”

“Yeah, I'm thinking.”

“Think fast,” he said. “Why don't you call him? You must have his cell phone.”

“I do, but he's got a big mouth—that's off the record.” Why was I worried about dissing Sally? Odds were he'd be dead within the hour, unless I could figure something out. I asked Reilly, “You wouldn't happen to have a ski mask in your car, would you?”

“No, I only rob banks on Thursdays. Listen, I'm leaving right now for MGH. I'll try to stop the car when they come in and get him outta the car and we'll make a run for it. That's all I can do.”

He'd be lucky to pull it off, and he knew it. He needed backup.

“How soon can you get here?” Reilly asked. “Where are you?”

“Roxbury,” I said. “Listen, you gotta watch it when you approach the car. His driver has to be the finger man. He'll be armed for sure. You come walking up to the car and he'll cap you and then deliver Sally right up to the door. I know Sally. He'll figure you had the contract.”

I hated talking so openly on the phone like this, but what alternative did I have?