Authors: George V. Higgins
“Stoat doesn’t understand this yet. He saw the goddamned movie. But
The Godfather
is history. Don Vito Corleone really
is
dead. Marlon Brando ain’t runnin’ ‘this thing of ours’ anymore. Isn’t like it used to be, as Stoat still assumes it is;
omerta
rules the day. It doesn’t. Just the opposite, in fact. Once OC gets involved now, and we bag one of them, someone’s going to snitch. It’s practically a footrace to see which rat talks first. The old days of
rispetatto
’re over.
“You got to get to know this type of guys, how they think and how they act, how they’re liable to react, any given situation. Because they do think different, and they act different, too, like they’re wired another way.
“Darren Stoat has not done that. He had never been OC until he came up here. As the man in charge. He’s got no
sense
of things, all right? The confidence that makes you feel like you know how to make decisions—and they won’t always be wrong. May not always be
right
, no, but you won’t
always
be wrong. How to
act
around these guys. So when you’re around them, in each other’s company, and you both know who you are, you’re
not saying things or, you know,
doing
things, that will make them … that they will then look at each other and say, ‘
Whoa
, what the hell is goin’ on here? What the fuck is this guy doin’, tellin’ me is happ’nin’ here?’
“Because the minute they start doin’ that, your little parlor game is over. When these guys play Monopoly, they play it with real money. They draw the ‘Go to Jail’ card, they know it’s not in fun—they’re really going to
jail
. The rules say you can take away from them every single thing they got? By doing what they do? They know if they get careless, give you half a chance to do that, that is what you’re gonna do.
“And at the same time they assume that
you
know if they can, they are gonna do exactly what will get them all the stuff they want. Hot babes and the cars, and their own safe houses when the heat’s on, down the Florida west coast. The tuna boats and Vegas trips, Kentucky Derby, Super Bowl—everything they want.
“What they want is what counts. They do not do resignation. So if getting what they want when they want it means they’ll do
anything
they have to do to get it, up to and including killing people, well okay then, it takes that. And they do it. And then when they get away with it—and we have to face it here, generally they have, or will at least until we get these tapes transcribed and enhanced so the jury doesn’t have to be Sicilians to understand them—they do not
quite
laugh right in your face, no; that would be impolite.
“But when they see you on the street, they smile when they say hello. That smile means, ‘So far we’ve got you beat.’ And you have to be able to smile right back. ‘I know it, but just “so far.” Not forever. Don’t get cocky yet.’
“Carlo—that bastard, for years he’s been smiling at me. You think I’m not gonna smile at him, the day we bring him in? Bet your sweet ass I am.
“You don’t go in knowing all that shit, what you are is fuckin’
doomed
. You cannot be friends with these guys. You can
respect
them—hell, you
have to
respect them, if you want to get anywhere. You don’t, well, you’re finished. They can
smell
disrespect, like dogs smell fear, and once they get a whiff of it on you they won’t give you another thing from that day forward. Even on a guy they hate, their own worst enemy that they think is worse than dogshit—if they don’t first think you have respect for
them
, they’ll be toast before they’ll tell you anything that he did or plans to do.
“So, even though you
don’t
think that, you don’t in fact respect them, you still have to act like you do—convince them that you agree that they’re just as important, just as powerful, doing what they do, on their side of the law, as we are on ours.
“But then that is
it
. Mutual respect. That’s as far as it can go. You can horse around with them, shoot the shit and have some laughs, but you can’t be buddies with them; they can never be your pals.
“That kind of stuff Stoat don’t know—where you draw the fuckin’ line and how the fuck you draw it. And that’s what worries me. At first I didn’t understand why he reacts the way he does when you tell him something. Like say you drop a two-oh-nine interview report on him, all right?
“Like this case, all right?” Farrier made a sweeping motion with his left arm to encompass the room. “Make believe none of this’s goin’ on. Go back eleven months or so in your mind, all right? It’s now nineteen ninety-six again, ninety-early-seven, and you aren’t you, now, you’re me.
“You haven’t been in the Boston office that long, never mind this squad. Three years. Two careers ago, in the old days, you didn’t have the turnover that you’ve got today. Guys got on this squad and stayed forever, fifteen years or so. Three years then was yesterday. All right, but times’ve changed. Fogarty’s only
gone six-eight months or so, and you have not been here that long, but now you be
da man
, as they say. Fogarty made that clear.
“When he retired he said, ‘I do bequeath you all of my right, title and interest in the, ah, what to call it,
collegial
relationship that first Albert A. DeMarco, may his memory be ever green, and then I, with his tutelage, have built up, cultivated, nurtured and developed, with two professional gentlemen of first Al’s and then my longtime acquaintance, whose occupations, some would say, border on disreputable. If not felonious.’
“Okay, now I know I got it, but I’m not exactly sure yet what exactly this thing is.
“Then Stoat comes out of nowhere, no experience at all, and gets Fogarty’s job. Naturally I’m pissed off; sulk a week or so. But then, ‘Well, okay, can live with this. I’m a career guy; too many years in onna pension, kiss it all off now. I can work with anyone. Maybe he’s all right.’
“Gradually, I find out he’s not.
“I make a routine contact with a low-level guy I’ve known a while, about a hundred years. Could’ve been an accident, bumped into him on the street, or maybe he called me—wasn’t anything I’d planned. Drops one on me for nothin’. Says something that I know means it might not do me any harm to go and noodge another guy, tomorrow or the next day—see what more pops out.
“So I dictate the two-oh-nine and it goes in the pipe, and a day or so goes by and I do some other things I had on my list to do, but also in the meantime also make damn sure I see this other guy. Really nothing yet, but still, know from my experience, the first guy I talked to—sure, he may be lower echelon, but when he tells me something it’s at least warm when you touch it. Not something that’ll keep—fact generally it’s
hot
. Thing to do is run it down, soon as possible.
“Say the first guy’s Abe, which he wasn’t, anna guy I went to see because of what Abe laid on me’s Bob. Also not his name. By the time Darren’s read my two-oh-nine, what Abe said to me—and keep in mind that all of this’s still strictly maybes at the point where I did that memo, nothing definite—but now things are taking on a shape. I’ve talked to Bob, and now as a result of what he gave up to me, first thing I’m gonna do when I get in tomorrow, I’m gonna see what kind of activity there’s been lately in shipments of high-fashion women’s clothes.
“As long as I been at it, I still get excited. Old war-horse smellin’ cordite. Nothing’s certain—may be nothing; but it
also
may be something.
“Well, next day, almost quittin’ time, turns out it
is
something,
definitely
worth looking into. And so first thing inna morning, gonna take a deeper look.
“This’s when I run into Stoat, on the way out that night. He’s on his way out too, something with the wife or something—he’s in kind of a hurry. But I think this’s hot, something that he should know about. I should bring him up to speed, so he’s aware of where I’m headed.
“Now, I know he hasn’t seen the second two-oh-nine, the interview with Bob. Be better if he had—have less to explain—but I know he hasn’t. I just finished dictating it to Ginny. As fantastic as the kid is, she ain’t got it typed up yet. Still, he oughta know I got this stuff, be abreast of it, so I do the best I can. Give him a quick fill.
“The first thing’s to make sure that he read the one with Abe. Otherwise he’s got no context, and he’ll never understand. So I ask him, did he get it?
“And he says ‘
Yep
.’ Proud of himself, how efficient he is, which of course he always has been.
Efficient’s
always been his hallmark, every desk he’s been assigned, all through his career. Every kind of work he did, before he came up here and he got
the squad? The reason wasn’t that he knew a thing about the mob; it was that he was
efficient
. Which in every instance, matter what his title was—and I know, because when I found he’s gettin’ this job, for which he’s not qualified, well, I looked the bastard up. Find out what experience he’s got that’s better for chief, OCS, than workin’ OCS.
“Movin’ paper’s what it was. Movin’ fuckin’ paper. From the box on left side of the desk, where he found it inna morning, to the box on the right side when the quittin’ whistle blew.
“Which of course is not enough—no field experience at all. But in his case it was. Because apparently when it comes to pushin’ paper, man, this guy has got no equal. He’s the very best on earth.
Except
for the one shuffler who’s even
better
at it, and that’s the guy above him who decided eighteen years of moving paper’s the best training and experience that there is to head up an organized-crime squad in a major center of La Cosa Nostra.
“So,
yep
, Stoat
has
read read my two-oh-nine on Abe. ‘It was on my desk this morning, got to it this afternoon. I’ll be very interested, see where this thing leads.’
“ ‘
Okay
,’ I say, a sigh relief, but I’m not really thinking. ‘Now like I said in it, the next thing I was gonna do, I contacted Bob today. Bob’s a really plugged-in guy—nothin’ major happens ’thout him knowin’ least one guy that’s involved in it.’
“Doin’ a little
sellin
,’ here, because as you and I both know that Stoat’s the kind of guy who’s always thinkin’, ‘Taxpayer dollars bein’ spent here. Got to be sure this is
guaranteed
bonus points down at Seat of Government, Best Allocation of Resources.’ So I’m givin’ him a pitch.
“ ‘And on the basis what Bob told me I have got a good idea I am gonna find tomorrow when I call
another
guy I also know about a hundred years—used to be Manhattan PD, worked the DA’s office, let’s say his name is Charlie—now with New York insurance office of the central clearing house, and I tell him that
I bet they’ve had a doozy of a recent major claim in the garment business, right? High-priced women’s suits and dresses. And if he hasn’t seen it—which he may not’ve yet because this information’s
smokin
’; these national retail chains’ve got layers and layers and layers ’tween the warehouse and front office; people that he talks to may not have the word themselves that the goods’re really gone—he is gonna pretty soon. And get him started checking on it, see what he comes up with.
“ ‘Because if Charlie tells me what I’m pretty sure he’s gonna tell me, we get on the horn tomorrow, I think I know where we find about eight hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Calvin Klein, DonnaKaran, Ralph Lauren, and AnnTaylor women’s
clothes
. So goddamned hot they’re barely outta sweatshops where the kids sewed them together. Not even
tagged
yet, Worcester distribution hub, the chain where they were headin’ when the wise guys cut ’em off.’
“Naturally Darren doesn’t understand a fuckin’ word I’m sayin’ to him. This is because he’s just told me he didn’t understand a fuckin’ word in the Abe two-oh-nine. That he just
read
. And he just
told
me that, but I wasn’t listening to him. All he’s seen’s what Abe said. His reaction is that he’ll be very interested, see where that’s gonna lead. But it’s not gonna lead
anywhere
, except to Bob, who might have something, or not. Which is what I said in it, and what I just told him I talked to Bob today. And it did. Exactly what the Abe two-oh-nine told him I was gonna do, and Bob told you exactly what your two-oh-nine predicted he might say.
“You see what I mean. You do your very best to keep Stoat up to speed, something large breaking, and already he’s falling behind the curve. By the time he catches up to what Bob said, and what Charlie says, you’ll be on your way to Dave. Already thinking about how you’re going to approach Eddie. So Stoat’s comment
is inane, and you are wasting both your time telling him what happened next—he can’t understand it. He’s got no idea of process. He does not know what things
mean
.
“He’s never been
line
; always he’s been
staff
. He’s a
freak
in his job, least in my OC experience—and by nineties standards I’ve been at it a long time. He’s never been a field officer, out among the troops where the shooting’s going on. Always been at headquarters, thinking what someone he’s never met and never will is going to say, they testify before House Ways and Means, Bureau Budget for next year.
“When you were ITSMV, chasing stolen cars in Wichita; I was hunting fugitives in Houston; he was rinsing out the coffeepots at Quantico, taking CIA courses at McLean. When he came here he didn’t blow in from Seattle with a classy record on the fraud squad. He came from
Washington
, for
seasoning
, get some experience in the
field
—the brass’s favorite adjutant detached from HQ down to his own first real command, battalion.
“Took me a while to realize this, implications of it all. That first day I did not. That what I’d just said to him meant about as much to him as all that chaff and gibberish on the tapes that I couldn’t understand today. Doesn’t follow things as they develop, way that we do. It’s because he’s never
seen
things develop. All he’s ever seen’s the way cases look
after
they’ve developed. The way the whole fat case file looked, twenty, thirty two-oh-nines, lab tests, and everything. When it was submitted for approval, prosecution.