The Pariot GAme (11 page)

Greenan began to eat the chowder. “Don’t eat so fast, Ticker,” Seats said. “First thing you know, you’ll give yourself indigestion and you’ll have to find somebody, takes Maalox, and bum a couple off him, and a friendly cow that doesn’t know you and will give you a glassa milk, free.” Seats took two more oysters, put sauce on them and put them in his mouth.

“Look, Seats,” Greenan said.

“I am looking,” Seats said. “You don’t have to call my attention to it.” He chewed his oysters. “You oughta know better’n that, nice Irish boy like you, had a good upbringing. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“For Christ sake, Seats,” Greenan said, with his mouth full, “you’re doing it. You’ve been doing it since you got those oysters.”

“Of course,” Seats said. “Everybody knows I’m vulgar. You’re supposed to have some class, even if you are running around with ladies’ underwear in your pockets.”

Greenan threw his napkin on the table. “Are you gonna listen to me or not, Seats?” he said.

Seats chewed silently. He took another oyster and put it into his mouth. He chewed. With his mouth full, he drank beer and swallowed. He took another oyster. He chewed some more. He drank more beer. He swallowed.

“Well?” Greenan said.

“I’m thinking,” Seats said. “Is it all right if I think, for Christ sake? Good God, I try to do a man a favor and come to lunch with him, and all he does is yell at me. I need this? I can get yelled at without even leaving my desk.”

“You keep this up,” Greenan said, “and I am warning you: I will get out of here and you can pay for your own goddamned oysters and your crabmeat and your goddamned
fish that you ordered with the lobster sauce and the fancy French wine.”

“Okay,” Seats said, “go ahead. You’re right. I can pay for it. Of course, on the other hand, you won’t have told me whatever the hell it is that you want me to do. But that’s your business, none of mine.” He put the last oyster in his mouth.

“I assume you know your business, Ticker.”

Greenan took the napkin back and tucked it into his shirt.

He sighed. He went back to the chowder. “It’s a serious thing, like I said,” he said.

“I heard of very few murder cases that were all in fun,” Seats said. “What’d he do?”

“He killed a guy,” Greenan said, eating chowder rapidly.

“Well,” Seats said, “no shit. You mean to tell me a guy doing time for murder got himself convicted of
killing
somebody? Son of a bitch, Ticker, I tell you, a man learns something different every time he runs into you. And all these years I been thinking when they charged you with murder, it meant you let your dog run around with no license or you threw your beer bottles on the neighbor’s lawn. Goddammit, it’s a rare day you don’t find out something new in this great land of ours.”

“Seats,” Greenan said, finishing his chowder and wiping his mouth, “lemme up, all right? The guy’s a convicted murderer.”

The waiter took away the oyster plate and the chowder bowl. He brought the crab cocktail and set it before Seats. Seats nodded. The waiter brought the Muscadet and displayed the label to Seats. “Fine,” Seats said. “Open the bugger and pour me some.” The waiter returned to his station for a corkscrew. “Who’d he kill, Ticker?”

“He killed another hood,” Greenan said, “a guy out in Framingham.”

“Another hood?” Seats said. “This means the guy’s a hood himself, and he’s going for a pardon? Good luck to you and
the Red Sox, Ticker. I couldn’t get that one through the Council with a crowbar. You got any idea what happened to the guys that let the boss out, about fifty years ago? Actually, it was less’n that, and he wasn’t the boss, not then anyway, but there was air-conditioned hell to pay. One guy went to jail, for Christ sake.” Seats took a forkful of crabmeat and dipped it in the cocktail sauce. “I can see, maybe, a guy killed his wife and he’s not gonna do it again, for goddamned sure, her being dead and all. But a hood kills a hood and we let the winning hood out and tell him not to worry, go forth and sin no more? Christ sake, Ticker, I’d’ve known it was this kind of weight you’re asking me to carry, I wouldn’t’ve asked for fuckin’ lunch, no matter how this’s hurtin’ your feelings.” He chewed crabmeat. “I would’ve told you I want a fuckin’ pension, for Christ sake, and a condo down Sea Island, Georgia, and maybe a little motorboat, I can go fishing.”

“No, look, Seats,” Greenan said. “Magro hasn’t got any money.”

“This’s really good crabmeat, Ticker,” Seats said, chewing. “You oughta have some.” The waiter brought the opened bottle of Muscadet and poured a little. Seats tried it and smacked his lips appreciatively. “My friend,” he said, “thou hast saved the good wine until the last. Pour me a glass there, and bring me a bucket of ice so the rest of it doesn’t get warm.” The waiter bowed, and left the table. “Okay, Ticker,” Seats said, “what is it exactly that I am supposed to look at?”

“This guy,” Greenan said, “this guy Michael Magro is small-time stuff. No heavy hitter. He never pulled a trigger on anybody before in his life.”

“Yeah,” Seats said, eating crabmeat. “How you know that?”

“Well,” Greenan said, moving around in the chair as Seats punctured another lemon and squeezed it on the crabmeat, “I just know it.”

“Right,” Seats said, taking another hunk of crabmeat, “and
I know that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. How you know so much about this guy? Where you get your information? How good is it? How do I know somebody didn’t blow smoke up your ass and now you’re tryin’, blow the same smoke up my ass? Used smoke, for Christ sake.”

“Look,” Greenan said, “his mother’s a great friend of my mother’s.”

“For all I know,” Seats said, “George Washington’s mummy played bridge every week with Benedict Arnold’s. What’s that got to do with me? That doesn’t mean shit. You got to come up with something better’n that.”

Greenan slumped in the chair as Lobianco finished the crabmeat and drank wine. “Seats,” Greenan said. “Do me one small favor, all right?”

“Right,” Seats said. “One small favor, like get a killer out of the slammer so he can do it again. I changed my mind, Ticker. I’ll buy lunch. You go on your way with your nighties and I’ll have my fish.”

“That nightgown isn’t mine,” Greenan said. His face was red.

“All right,” Seats said, “it’s somebody else’s nightgown. I believe you, Ticker. I believe everything you say. This guy Magro is a poor unfortunate kid that happened to get caught dusting off another poor hood that wasn’t quick enough on the draw for him, and if he gets out, he will never do it again. I believe that. You know what gullible means? Consider me gullible. Who’d he kill?”

“It was a guy named Holby,” Greenan said, “and that’s really all I know. Except that Holby had a record.”

S
EATS WAS
in his office with his feet on the desk. He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. His face was flushed. He had put on his half-glasses for reading, but he was laughing and they had slid down nearly to the end of his nose. He had the phone receiver buried in his jowls again.

“Ahh, Mattie,” he said, “I tell ya, ya wouldn’t fuckin’ believe it. First thing the guy does is, he shows up late, right? And he’s got this bag with him. It’s one of those; Lord and Taylor things. So I take it away from him and he’s got a fuckin’ nightie and some sexy little drawers in it, and I wave them all around. I thought he was gonna have some kind of a fit, everybody in the place’s sittin’ there laughing at him and you know how he looks. He don’t look like no self-respecting Irish at all that comes from Rozzie Square and knows how to do the right thing. He looks like some hayshaker, just come down from Bangor, see his first tall buildings. There he is, all skin and bones, his ears stick out like them television antenna things and he gets his hair cut down the barber school where they do you for a quarter if you let the rookies practice on you, and he’s got on this suit that I bet his grandfather liked pretty well when he got it for twelve bucks, two pairs of pants with extra-heavy knees back at Raymond’s just before the war, the one that Pershing was in. And I’m wavin’ these
undies around at everybody. And he sits down and I stick him for the whole ball of wax, the crabmeat cocktail and everything. I mean, Mattie, this’s gotta be serious, right? Ticker Greenan, buying a lunch like that? I had all I could do, I didn’t ask him the minute he came through the door, what the hell it was. I mean, it hadda be he wants his nephew to be appointed
Pope
or something, it’s that important to him. Thing of it is, though, I know the minute he gets it offa his chest, he’s gonna screw on me and beat lunch.

“So, Mattie,” Seats said, “I finally let the guy talk, and you know what is bothering him? This guy Magro that wants the commutation thing there, the pardon? And it’s murder, for Christ sake. No murder that matters a good goddamn to anybody, not like he tried to shoot the Governor or something. Hell, maybe even that wouldn’t get anybody too excited, considering the number of guys I heard over the years say they’d like to try it. But I thought maybe he wanted the black lady knocked down that we got coming up this after the judgeship and he wants me give it his idiot nephew that’s the deputy clerk in Lawrence, which there is no way on earth I can do. And the only other thing that I can think of that’d make Ticker spring for lunch is the SJC thing. Not even Ticker’s got the balls to go for that one for some hacker like he’s always putting up.

“But, no, what he wants is a third-rate hood that knocked off another lowlifer, and I can’t figure it out. So I make it sound real difficult, you know? I say to him, I say, ‘Ticker, Ticker, murder one? You been reading all that stuff in the papers, you think the Council’s just a cheap pawnshop? Good Christ, Ticker. Kid makes a little mistake, like he steals a car or something, I maybe got some chance, I can do something for you. But murder one? Who is this guy Magro? He Mrs. Ticker’s long-lost brother or something?’ And Ticker won’t tell me. I got to snake it out of him like he had the reason
under one of his tooth fillings. And I finally get it out of him. At least he says I got it out of him. He is doing a favor for Monsignor Fahey down at Precious Blood. Seems like Monsignor Fahey’s faithful housekeeper, some simple-minded old tad that’s most likely been tiddly on the communion wine for about a hundred years, this kid Magro’s her nephew and she’s been so sick at heart she practically got football knees making novenas for the poor lad, and now she’s gettin’ ready to kick the bucket and Fahey wants this favor done her.”

Seats paused and listened. “No, Mattie, no, I’m not sure of that at all. That’s probably what Ticker thinks he’s doing, nice little favor for the Monsignor and everything, but Ticker’s so dumb you could tell him you could get by on eating nothing but wood, and he would think you gave him a surefire way to save more money. He would go out and get a truckload of used shingles and siding. That’s why I’m calling you. See if you can find out what the hell is going on here, will ya? It’s one thing to have somebody snorkel you, happens to the best of us, but if it’s Ticker Greenan doing it, that’d be very embarrassing. Besides, if there is money changing hands here, I want to know about it. Isn’t anybody going to whipsaw old Seats into settin’ up a payoff, puts me in the can. I understand the food in there is lousy.”

Pete Riordan entered the east wing of the main building of the State House through the back door at the portico. He climbed the marble steps with difficulty, his boot heels slipping somewhat, and turned right down the corridor toward Lobianco’s office. He passed the elevator on the right where two men in short-sleeved shirts were studying a racing form, came to the door to Lobianco’s office and went in. His face was streaming with sweat.

Alice Vickery looked up from her paperback copy of
Rich Man, Poor Man.

“Can I help you?” she said. “My God, you’re roasting in that.” She put the book down. “Take your jacket off and sit down, wearing a heavy thing like that in weather like this. You’ll have a stroke for yourself.” She started to get up.

Riordan smiled at her. “No, really, it’s okay, ma’am. You know how it is: Every man to his own hangover cures. I’ve got several, and this is one of them. When I make a fool of myself, I sweat the poison out of me the next day.”

“I have a beer, myself,” she said. “That always works.”

“Ma’am,” Riordan said, “I didn’t say the sweat cure is the only one I use. I also replace the old poison with new poison, when I’ve got a really critical attack. Which I have today. Is Mister Lobianco in?”

“Yes,” she said, “and it’s a good thing for you, too, because he’s got his own air conditioner in there and he keeps that office cold enough to age meat in. Who’s calling, please?”

“Well,” Riordan said, “I don’t have any appointment or anything. If he’s busy …”

“He isn’t doing a goddamned thing,” she said. “They had a short meeting today and he’s on the phone the way he always is, telling lies to his buddies and getting them to tell him stories in return. What’s your name?”

“Riordan,” Riordan said.

“Hey, Seats,” Alice yelled, “man named Riordan here to see you.”

“Hey, Riordan,” Lobianco said, “I haven’t got your goddamned magazine. Nothing I can do about your foglights and your taillights, run around in that surgeon’s car you got, impressing everybody.”