Killers (6 page)

Clay Westridge leaned forward. “Why now? That's the bigger question. From what I've been told, up until today, everything in the Boston underworld here has been comparatively peaceful for several years now. Sally Curto has more or less made this Irish fellow from Somerville, I forget his name—”

“Bench McCarthy,” I said, “pronounced McCar-tee, like the old-time Irish.”

“He's basically the number-two guy from what I understand. I've heard he was essentially a hit man in his younger days. Is that correct?”

“I don't know what you mean by his younger days,” I said, glancing over at Taylor for confirmation. “He's only in his early forties now.”

Kevin Caulfield harrumphed. “I'm very close to someone high up in the Boston Police Department—you fellows would know his name if I mentioned it. He told me, strictly on the q.t., that they have this McCarthy fellow for over twenty murders. Is that possible, Jack?”

Now I was the expert instead of the fed, and I wasn't even officially on the payroll yet. Things were definitely looking up.

“I don't know for sure, but twenty sounds like it's in the ballpark,” I said. “He's from Somerville, so he got an early start.”

Some guys love bullshitting their way through a subject they know next to nothing about, especially when they're trying to close a deal. That's not my style. For sure I wanted this job, but I didn't want to leave them with the impression that I was capable of accomplishing more than I actually could. That would lead to hard feelings and recriminations down the road, not to mention no future business from the Caulfields. I still have to live in this town, as much as I'd prefer not to, especially during the eight months we call winter, and I don't need any more enemies. Most of what I knew about Bench McCarthy I had read in the newspapers.

“I had McCarthy's jacket pulled for me this afternoon,” said Taylor, the ex-FBI agent, who obviously enjoyed playing Mr. Big with all the connections. He was, after all, a G-man. “It seems that he was convicted of a truck hijacking at age seventeen, and he ended up in MCI-Norfolk. That's where he met Sally Curto, and while he was in there, McCarthy did some sort of favor for him.”

“It's coming back to me now,” I said. “There was some racial unrest or maybe a contract, and a black guy jumped Sally in the showers. Sally was about to get shanked when Bench—”

Westridge interrupted: “Why do they call him Bench, by the way?”

“The way I understand it,” I said, “whenever he's indicted, he asks for a jury-waived trial—a bench trial, in front of a judge.”

Westridge was leaning forward, paying close attention to what I was saying.

“See, Mr. Westridge, most wiseguys figure they got a better chance with a jury. With twelve people, maybe they can get to one, if you know what I mean.”

“But if you ask for a jury-waived trial,” Westridge said, “then you must have the judge in your pocket, right?”

“One would think so,” I said, “and I can tell you that except for fourteen months he and Sally did for contempt of a federal grand jury about five years ago, Bench has never been convicted of anything since he first got out of prison.”

Westridge shook his head. “Are the judges in this state really that corrupt?”

Before answering, I glanced over at Kevin Caulfield for guidance. He frowned. As far as he was concerned, judicial corruption was some kind of dirty little family secret, as if nobody in Massachusetts knows that in the halls of justice the only justice is in the halls. As my friend Slip Crowley always says, it's that ninety-eight percent of the judges who give the honest two percent such a bad rap.

I said, “All I can tell you, Mr. Westridge, is that Bench is in many respects a very formidable character.”

“How did he happen to throw in with the Mafia?” Westridge asked. Again, I deferred, this time to the ex-fed. I wasn't on the payroll yet. But Taylor motioned for me to continue.

“When Bench takes out the black guy in prison, Sally knows he's ‘capable.' After they both get out, Bench starts handling ‘a piece of business' here and there for Sally, and it isn't long before he's kind of thinned out the Italians, if you follow me. Plus, Bench is building up his own crew at the same time—in Somerville, Southie, all the neighborhoods where there's still a lot of Irish, or were fifteen, twenty years ago. Neighborhoods, towns not controlled by the Mafia, that's probably a better way to put it. Then Bench had his own little war, against Beezo Watson's gang in Charlestown. McCarthy wiped them out too; several of them just ‘disappeared,' including Beezo. My understanding is, a few years back he goes to Sally and makes Sally an offer he can't refuse—”

“Ah,” said Clay Westridge with a smile, “a movie reference.”

I nodded at the FBI guy and went on: “Just jump in if I get anything wrong, Tom, but the way I heard it is, Bench tells Sally, the city's teeming with bookies and drug dealers who aren't paying either of us ‘rent' so why don't we just split 'em up? The ones Bench grabs first belong to him, and the ones Sally grabs first, he keeps. Sally figures, that seems fair enough, especially considering most of his top guns are either dead or in the can, plus he's like twenty-five years older than Bench so he's had plenty of time to set himself up. If he cuts in Bench, he doesn't have to worry about a war, plus he's got Bench with him if anybody comes after him. Lotta reasons to make the deal, so he does.”

Clay Westridge furrowed his brow. He seemed brighter than your average vice president of governmental affairs. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought most of the gambling now was online, off-shore.”

“It absolutely is,” I said. “As I said, this entire arrangement dates back at least a decade.”

“So how does Bench make his money now?”

“A little of this, a little of that. Drugs, truck hijackings, he fronts money for guys just out of the can. He likes armored cars, at least if somebody else is going in with the gun and the mask. Heard he also made a bundle when that bank in Braintree was burglarized a couple of years ago. He got a piece of it, a big piece. Plus he's got a couple of bars and a garage in Roxbury, although that's mostly a clubhouse from what I hear.”

“How do you know all this, Reilly?” Westridge asked, and Tom Taylor cut in:

“His brother's a wiseguy, Mr. Westridge.” He smiled at me; he was supposed to be the expert, and after my soliloquy he needed to reestablish his bona fides. “Isn't that right, Jack?”

Westridge ignored that. He just wanted information. So I figured I should answer his question.

“My brother's doing a bit—a sentence—up at Devens. Federal time. I told you, Bench likes to front jobs. He likes buffers. He set up a score my brother was supposed to be the driver on, a truck hijacking. Somebody tipped the cops.”

“Your brother couldn't make a deal?”

I smiled wanly. “Not if he wanted to keep breathing.”

It was Taylor's turn to lean forward. “I brought a few surveillance photos along, Mr. Westridge, so you can see what the two of them look like.” He passed a manila folder over to Westridge, who studied the pictures carefully. Even though this gang war or whatever it was represented a major headache for him and his company, you could tell he loved this Mob stuff.

“So the little fat guy—that's Sally?” Taylor nodded. “My God, he looks like Danny DeVito.… And the younger, taller guy beside him in the windbreaker is …

“Bench McCarthy,” Taylor said.

“Doesn't really seem to look like a gangster,” Westridge said, “not that I have a lot of experience.… Who's the hulking guy walking behind them? Now he does look like a Mafia thug.”

“That's Philip Imbruglia,” Taylor said. “The late Philip Imbruglia. He's the guy that got blown up this afternoon. He runs—ran—Sally's street rackets. They called him ‘Hole in the Head,' because, as you might surmise, he survived getting shot in the head way back when.”

Westridge nodded gravely and took a gulp of his drink. This was as much anthropology as it was governmental relations.

“Look at the next picture,” Taylor said, and Westridge did. I leaned over to get a peek at it myself. It was several guys and a few cops standing around a compact car at night. They were outside a three-decker; it looked like Dorchester or Southie. In the driver's seat was the body of a man with his head thrown back, eyes wide open, his jaw slack. In his forehead you could see a gaping exit wound.

Westridge recoiled slightly, then looked at Taylor.

“Did Bench do this?” he asked.

Taylor nodded. “It's what the police call a ‘cold case.'”

“I'm just trying to get the lay of the land here,” Westridge said. “What's the current relationship between the Mafia and Bench? Mr. Reilly?”

“My understanding is that Bench doesn't have to kick up anything to Sally. He's the only one around here who doesn't. In return, I guess you could say he remains on call, if Sally needs him.”

“You mean for contracts?” Westridge asked, using the movie lingo. I nodded.

“If Bench is so smart,” Westridge said, “why doesn't he move the gambling to Aruba or someplace and get out of the spotlight? If he stays around here, he's bound to make a mistake.”

“No doubt,” I agreed. “But he hasn't made one yet. Not since he was a kid.”

The old lobbyist Caulfield leaned forward across his desk to look at me. He had a wan smile on his face now. I was making him look good. I was the guy he'd brought to the table who knew more than Westridge's FBI agent. Points for Caulfield. But now it was time for the lobbyist to put in his own considerably more than two cents.

“Look,” Caulfield said to me, “I don't suppose I have to tell you that we don't really care if they all kill each other off, but this is queering the whole casino deal, and our client has already got millions invested. We'll do anything within reason to stop the bloodshed.”

“That's very commendable of you, I'm sure,” I said.

“Are you being fresh with me, young man?” Kevin Caulfield said.

“No, sir,” I lied. “I just think there's something you ought to understand before we go any further.”

“And what is that, Mr. Reilly?”

“Well, I'm not sure anybody really knows who's been bumping off Sally's guys.”

“Surely it must be this Bench McCarthy,” Caulfield harrumphed, “trying to complete his hostile takeover of the Mob.”

“That's the way they'd write it in a movie script, I guess, but sometimes it's not that cut and dried,” I said. “I don't know much right now, but I made a few calls before I came over here. And I can tell you that Bench has been moving around the city all day, asking questions. He wouldn't be operating so openly if he'd just started a gang war with Sally. And if he'd started the war, he probably wouldn't need to be asking all these questions. Although I suppose he could just be doing it for show. They're pretty devious, these guys, especially when they're lining somebody up.”

Clay Westridge said, “If he was behind these murders, he'd have gone ‘to the mattresses,' is that what you're saying?” He was a gangster movie buff, no doubt about it. Assuming this could all be straightened out, it would make interesting cocktail party chatter in suburban Houston someday.

“Do you know either of these hoodlums?” Caulfield said. “Could you make an overture to them for us?”

“Sally I've met a couple times.”

I didn't mention how, which was when I was at City Hall, picking up what you might call contributions for the old mayor. Like Sally, Bench was a cash contributor. His main base of operations was in Somerville, but he had the taproom in Allston and the garage in Roxbury, so he had to do the right thing by us if he didn't want any trouble, and of course he didn't. So Bench had our guys from ISD—Inspectional Services—on his pad. And their boss, the mayor, who was also my boss, insisted on his end. That was my job, collections. Everybody, not just gangsters, needs a buffer, and I was the mayor's. Plus, there was the familial connection to my dim-bulb brother Marty.

“I'd recognize Bench on the street, and I've had, uh, dealings with him a couple of times too, but I doubt he'd remember me.”

“Well, then, could your brother make the approach?” Clay Westridge said.

“His brother is in prison, remember,” Tom Taylor reminded him.

Westridge took a deep breath. This was not the kind of problem they brainstormed in the four-year program at the Harvard Law School/Business School, or maybe he went to SMU. I glanced over at the three of them. They all looked glum, probably wondering how they would be judged by the home office if I was the best link to organized crime that they could come up with. The old man's annual $100,000 retainer was on the line, maybe even the $300,000 salary of the vice president, governmental relations.

It had all seemed so neat and clean forty-eight hours ago. They had the governor, a lame duck, ready to sign anything in return for a couple of directorships down the road. They had the Senate president, preparing to run for governor, a race he would almost certainly lose. But until the primary, the Senate president would still need, first, cash, and after he was beaten and a lame duck, he'd likewise need the same thing the lame-duck governor was looking for: a golden parachute and a soft landing. The House speaker represented the district where Westridge's casino would be built, so he didn't need to be paid—not as much, anyway. Westridge and Caulfield were getting the hometown discount from Mistah Speakah, although eventually he'd get his end too.

But now all their scheming and dreaming was unraveling, and they couldn't believe it. They were at the mercy, apparently, of thugs. Blue-collar thugs, as opposed to white-collar thugs like themselves.

“Sir,” I said to the old man, “may I inquire, just what sort of approach were you thinking of making to these parties?”