Killers (40 page)

“This guy Bench,” he said, “not many people know it—”

“And I'd just as soon keep it that way, Sally.”

That got a few laughs, and gave a couple of people a chance to get up and get drinks or go to the bathroom. But of course it didn't stop Sally.

“I meet this kid, I'm doing a bit in Norfolk, on a bullshit state gambling beef. And I run into this kid, and I mean he is a kid, he's like seventeen years old. In the can with all these hard-core criminals like me, they called him something, in-something, what'd they call you, Bench?”

“Incorrigible.” I could see this all ending up on the front page of the paper someday.

“Lemme tell you how incorrigible. I got some problems back then with some wiseguys in Revere, and they thought with me in the joint, it'd be a good idea to hire this big fucking—”

“Sally, please,” I said.

“I know, Bench.” He paused, then looked out at the gathering. “You know what Bench likes to remind me of, and I ain't kiddin' here. He always says, ‘There's no statute of limitations on murder.'”

At this point I decided an intervention was in order. I stood up and pushed back my chair.

“Folks,” I said, raising my wineglass, “what the olive-oil importing business gained, the criminal bar lost. You would have made a helluva criminal lawyer, Sally.” I clinked my glass with Patty's. “Here's to Sally, our pal, we're glad you're okay, and Jason's gonna be okay, and I'm okay, and everybody's okay.
Salud!”

Sally was winded, thank God. He sat down heavily and George Graft brought him another drink. The Café Ravenna is a traditional North End tomato-sauce place, which is to say, nothing memorable. But this night I swear they must have ordered out from one of the good joints, maybe Bricco.

Everything was top notch. The antipasto, and none of that wilted iceberg-lettuce salad as the second dish. Perfect eggplant parmagian, and then veal saltimbocca, exquisite, which we were chowing into when suddenly Liz McDermott came barging into the back room, the maître d' in hot pursuit. She was wearing her ten-gallon hat again.

“Sally,” she said, “I've got to talk to you.”

Sally stood up and waved off the maître d'. Then he looked over at George Graft, who was also getting up, and shook his head. Sally would handle this one by himself. Patty leaned over to say something to me, but I shushed her. I knew Sally would be speaking too softly for me to hear much, but I wanted to try to catch at least a few words of what he was saying to her.

He was gesticulating wildly, and then he reached into his coat pocket and came up with a wad of cash, which he threw at her. Then he flicked her hat, which gave the play away, if I'd had any doubts. He turned back around and nodded at Spucky and Jimmy Lynnway, who were standing at attention, more bodyguards than guests.

As Liz staggered out, I stood up and walked out of the room. The men's room was behind the bar, so it didn't look suspicious. But instead of going to the head, I ducked out the emergency exit in back and dashed back around the building out onto Hanover Street. Then I stepped into the doorway of Mike's Pastry next door and waited for Liz to come by. She was still counting the cash Sally had given her as I grabbed her and pulled her into the bakery.

“Liz,” I said, “I thought I told you to get out of town.”

“Ah, Bench, it's just one more night.” Her words were slurred, she was swaying. I wondered how much of Henry Sheldon's money she still had left. “Give Liz a kiss—”

I pushed her away, but not before I smelled her breath. Whiskey. Rotgut blended rye no doubt. Good Lord.

I grabbed Liz by the shoulders and shook her as hard as I could without attracting attention.

“Liz,” I said, “whatever you do tonight, don't go near the Nite Lite. He told you again to come down wearing the hat, didn't he?”

She frowned at me through rheumy eyes. But unlike Sally, she wasn't drunk. She was stoned to the gills.

“You must think I'm stupid, Bench. I know he wants to get rid of me. If I'm wearing the hat, they'll know who to shoot when they walk in.”

“You know that, Liz, and yet you still went in there looking for him, in front of all those witnesses?”

“Witnesses? Those are his friends in there, like you. He's not gonna have me hit in front of his friends. The Nite Lite, that's where he wants it to happen.”

Her voice was rising. She was angry. I glanced over at the people behind the counter. Thank goodness, I didn't recognize any of them. Still, I put my finger to my lips and shook my head. I reached into my pocket and came out with about a grand in hundred-dollar bills.

“Do me a favor, Liz, get the fuck outta town or you're gonna get killed tonight.”

“I know that, Bench,” she said, grabbing the bills. “I already bought my ticket. I'm going to see my sister in—”

“Don't tell me, I don't wanna know.”

She took off her hat and handed it to me. “Got any molls you wanna get rid of, Bench? Give 'em this hat and drop 'em off at the Nite Lite around midnight.” She laughed so hard she finally started coughing—a real smoker's wheeze. “That's what time Sally says he's going to meet me there. He's happy again, Bench. His son's alive, he's got you, the war's over, and he figures he'll never see me again.” She suddenly burst into tears.

I walked over to a table in the bakery where two young touristy couples were finishing their cannolis and cappuccinos. I held out the hat and asked if anyone wanted a $350 hand-tooled genuine leather headband chapeau. One of the women giggled and grabbed it and they all started laughing. The girl put it on and they all started taking pictures of her with their cell phones. She and the other woman posed and then the first woman put the hat on the second one's head and they all started taking more selfies to tweet out.…

I walked back over to Liz and gave her a hug.

“I gotta get back to the time,” I said. “Please Liz, take that money, don't put it up your nose or stick it in your arm. Get the fuck outta Boston. Catch a plane tonight. Go anywhere; just get out of town. I'm serious.”

She turned to walk away, but before she could get very far on Hanover Street, I called her back. I held out my right hand, palm up. I pointed at her with my left index finger, smiled and shook my head.

“Almost forgot something, didn't you, Liz?”

She tried not to smile. “What do you mean, Bench?”

“Sally's watch,” I said. “Let's have it. I know you got it back from the Weeper. I called him and he told me you got it out of hock.”

“Ah, Bench,” she said, “that watch is my grubstake.”

“That watch is your death warrant,” I said. “Sally'll send someone looking for you if he knows you have the watch. Guess who'll get the contract.”

She sighed and reached into her purse. The watch had apparently been there all day; she had to take at least three full nip bottles out of the bag before she finally came up with the watch and handed it over. Then she smiled as sweetly as she could.

She went up on her tiptoes and kissed me on my lips as I did my best to hold my breath. “You're a good man, Bench.”

“No, I'm not,” I said, “and you know it.”

She laughed again, and I pointed my finger at her once more.

“Be missing,” I said. She nodded and walked out of the bakery and I went back to the party. I never saw her again.

*   *   *

Within the week, the story had been thoroughly aired out in the newspapers, except now it had become a political scandal rather than a gang war. Once the heat died down, the casino bill rose from the dead, Beezo-like, and came out of committee. It passed both branches of the legislature overwhelmingly and was signed into law by the lame-duck governor. The Gaming Commission then officially designated the company Reilly had been working for as the licensee for the Boston casino, which was really in Everett.

I asked Reilly if he'd supplied the info that had so obviously been used to shake down the commission and the legislature. He just laughed and said, “Who wants to know?”

I guess I had that one coming.

A few days later, Sally invited me to dinner at the Café Ravenna—a real dinner, not a let's-set-up-Liz supper. Just him and me, with Cheech on the door. Cheech seemed pleased with his promotion. I noticed he had even bought himself a new raincoat. I assumed he hadn't changed sawed-off shotguns, because he still listed to the right.

This time I was happy to go, because I'd given the watch to Jason at the hospital and told him that when he got out he should leave it somewhere in the Dog House where Sally would be sure to find it, and would just think he'd had a senior moment and misplaced it.

After dinner, Sally took a fat envelope out of his breast pocket and pushed it across the table.

“I appreciate what you done,” he said. “I know we're partners, but you had expenses. This here's for your troubles—fifty large.”

I smiled in gratitude.

“Now,” he said. “I got a business proposition. You know I know some people in Everett.” I nodded; they call the pols over there “the Common Council,” as in, common thieves.

“I ain't told you about this,” Sally said, “but when it looked like everything was goin' south, I bought a liquor license on a joint one block from the casino. Got it cheap too. Under the table of course. We're gonna have hookers, shylocks, bookies, you name it. You want in?”

Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course I wanted in.

“Good,” he said. “We'll go halfsies. Now you owe me fifty grand.”

I looked down at the table with my money bulging out of the envelope, then up at Sally. He smiled and swept up the envelope and put it back in his pocket. What the hell, though, it still seemed like a real steal, getting in on the ground floor of a gin mill around the corner from a “resort destination” casino, even if the resort was Everett. I was already considering names—for some reason, I always liked “the Horseshoe,” a very popular name in Nevada, just like you see a lot of joints named “the Paddock” around racetracks (or in the old days, in Somerville) …

Sally interrupted my daydreaming: “I just need one small favor of you, Bench.”

Obviously. Fifty large was too good to be true. My eyes narrowed.

“Kiss me, Sally,” I said. “I always like a kiss before I get fucked.”

He waved me off. “What's wrong with you? Only you could look a gift horse like this here in the mouth.”

I puckered up my lips. “I'm waiting,” I said.

“Okay,” Sally said, “since you asked. You know, we—that's you and me, partner—we're gonna need some muscle in this new joint, to keep out the element, the element that ain't us, that is. I was just wonderin', I been watchin' how some of these guys of yours handle themselves. I need guys that can straighten a thing out. So I'm comin' to you, everything up front and on the record, partner—”

“Please, Sally, get to the point.”

“Okay, the point is, do you mind if I ask them guys you got with you at the garage, with the card game in Andrew Square—”

“Salt 'n' Peppa?”

“Yeah, them two. You mind if I ask them if they'd like to come in on the joint? With us, I mean, because we're—”

“Partners, yeah, I know, you told me once already. Partners.” I paused as he awaited my response. He was rubbing his hands together, a sure sign he was anxious.

“Sally, you do understand, Peppa is…” I paused.

“I know, I know, I regret all them things I said about him now, I truly do. Don't tell him what I said, I mean, but I'm just telling you, I'm a fucking changed man. If I can just get this thing off the ground, I'm going so fuckin' legit it's ridiculous. Will you send 'em over the Dog House to sit down with me?”

What choice did I have? He's my partner.

*   *   *

The final problem we had was when the lawyers for Donuts Donahue filed a motion in court demanding to know how many bugs had been under the table at B.B. Bennigan's, and who had placed them there.

I asked Jack Reilly to handle it, since he'd had the same lawyer as Donuts. That way he could have a confidential chat with his old mouthpiece and if anything went wrong, both of them could claim attorney-client privilege. Jack sat down with him and the lawyer got all huffy, like he was rehearsing his lines for the trial. He said that if the feds had acted expeditiously, as he put it, and warned everybody about the plot, nobody would have gotten killed and his client would now be the president of the State Senate. He mentioned that back in the eighties when the FBI put the bug in Jerry Angiulo's headquarters, the G-men had given a heads-up to at least two guys that Jerry and the boys had been planning to put to sleep.

Jack listened and then went to see some guy he knew who worked for the A.G., an old reporter who owed him a favor, and this guy put him in touch with someone high up in the U.S. Attorney's Office. I don't know exactly how that conversation went down, but Jack pointed out to the fed that because the FBI hadn't alerted certain parties to the threat, the way they used to do, it wasn't just five people who ended up dead—it was three illegal aliens of color. Jack told him that if Eric Holder and Barack Obama ever found out that the DOJ office in Boston hadn't warned these undocumented Democrats that evil white American gangsters would be using them for target practice, that would not bode well for the U.S. attorney, who was already under suspicion, on the grounds of being a white heterosexual Roman Catholic male.

After due consideration of about ten seconds, the consensus in the U.S. Attorney's Office was, what can we do to make this go away, Mr. Reilly.

Jack told them he thought maybe he could make Donuts' motion for disclosure disappear. But first he needed something to bring back to Donuts's lawyer, and really, was it fair to tack another thirty years on and after his conspiracy sentence for those grenades in the shooters' car at Mass General that he knew absolutely nothing about?