Authors: George V. Higgins
“Naturally I didn’t know
how
he’d do this, make it happen, but I was pretty sure he would, and so I got down on it. And I make ten grand on ENC over Kansas, taking points.”
“That’s the kind of bet I would’ve made,” Cistaro said. “Only suckers gamble.”
“Exactly,” McKeach said. “Now today, he’s got three-four of his buddies in there with him. Not all as big as he is but they’re not exactly
small
—and anyway I’m not there like I went there to make trouble. So I tell him all of this, everything I just told you. I feel like I know him from before, even though I really don’t.
“And then I say to him, all right? Still trying to be nice. ‘When
I hear you’re in my territory, naturally I think, “This is the same Walterboy that I know of from a long time ago, I think we can do business. This’s real good news.”
“ ‘So I make it my business to run into you out here and I make the connection, all right? You don’t know it but you did me a good thing a long time ago. I’d just as soon do you one now. I mean, it doesn’t set me back too much and not too many other people hear about it. So I don’t then have them comin’ around all the time and asking me, you know, how come I do this for you, this spade from out of town someplace who’s not even from around here—and I won’t do it for them. This’s a good deal I’m offering you here, and all this talk and stuff you’re now givin’ me about it, I don’t expect I’m gonna get that, I first told you what it is. Throws a wrench into my plans.
“ ‘But look, it’s gettin’ late here and I gotta be someplace. So look, all right? It’s ten thousand dollars a week. You had at least a hundred kilos of the white stuff in here for three weeks now, and nobody bothered you.
Reason
that it happened that way is because this is my turf, and even though you didn’t ask me when you first come onto it, I find out that you are here, as I always do, you’re on it as my guest. You owe me seventy thousand bucks and you’re gonna pay it me, now.’
“And you know what he
said
to me, in that woman’s voice of his? You know what the fucker
said
? He said—first he laughed at me, all these big white fuckin’ teeth shinin’ out at me, like he’s got a string of pearls in his big black fuckin’
mouth
, puts his head way back and
laughs
—and he actually then says to me, ‘Go fuck yourself, white man. I go where I
want
to go, and where I go’s
my
turf.
That’s
why nothin’ happens to me—where I am, I am.’ ”
“Where the fuck’re you, all of this’s goin’ on?” Cistaro said, anger bubbling in his voice.
“The old Wheelers warehouse,” McKeach said. “West Roxbury? You go out by the railroad tracks there, follow them on
top the hill? Road bends to the left and you keep on goin’, pretty soon you’re gonna find yourself comin’ out back on Route One. You with me there so far?”
“There’a shopping center there,” Cistaro said. “Then a big fuckin’ movie theater, whole buncha fuckin’ screens, and a couple discount stores and some kind of a big car dealer, sells about a dozen different makes. I forget the name.”
“That’s the place,” McKeach said. “Brick building anna parking must cover three-four acres, dunno how much land they got, a really huge-big parking lot.”
“Yah,” Cistaro said, “I know the place you mean. Last time I was by there, forget what I was doin’, snow was onna ground. Not too much though—most of it’d melted out there onna parking lot. Dead weeds growin’ up all over, stickin’ up through holes, the pavement. But Wheelers trailers’re still out there, way down back there by the tracks. Made them look like they were lonesome, made me feel a little sad—six or eight of them, you know? Bright yellow and red paint they used to use, used to see them everywhere—‘T
HE
W
HOLE
W
ORLD
R
OLLS
O
N
W
HEELERS
.’
“Now you don’t see them no more. What happened to that company? Who owns that big plant now?”
“You wanna know something?” McKeach said. “Fact is I don’t really know. Some kind of business in the front part. This small sign out front, not sure really, what it says. ‘Something something Systems.’
“Like it’s one of those computer things nobody else can understand. Bookkeeping for other people, got their own businesses they mostly run all by themseves but they don’t wanna keep their books. Basically the same thing as Maxie does for us—keep track of the money, how much we got of it. But Maxie also brings it in, which I don’t think they would do—all they do is keep the books.
“I think they rent front space from whoever owns the building
now. Who’s out back or what they’re doin’ there? I doubt these people inna front know or even care who that is, what they’re doin’ in the space or bringin’ in and keepin’ there.
“Us, the way I first heard about it, whole back the building being absoutely vacant, I was over Marybeth’s house havin’ dinner one night, maybe three-four years ago. She invited me, said, ‘We never see you anymore—you got to stop around more.’ Which of course we both know they don’t’s because if there’s any chance at all that Emmett might come along, then she doesn’t dare invite me. Because Emmett told Caroline some years ago, and she then told Marybeth, he first made superintendent, he realized she’d still wanta keep in touch with her sister. And that naturally this would mean now and then that they’d also be having dinner, sometimes, one house or the other, with Marybeth and Peter. And that kind of thing would still be all right because he always did like Marybeth, and what with Peter being in what to him always looked something like real law enforcement—Peter’s in industrial security, New England district manager, Watchguard Security—him and Peter’d still be all right.
“But as far as
him
still seein’ me? Well, he knew Caroline probably would, time to time herself—just by accident. She was over Marybeth’s and I happened to drop by to see Peter about something—that would be perfectly okay. But he personally hadda stop doin’ it. He just couldn’t afford it anymore, him now bein’ command level, if word started gettin’ out, newspapers or something, he’s associatin’ with known felons. Such as me. Even though I dunno what kind of big change it could’ve made made, his goddamned career, him makin’ superintendent, him and Caroline her sister and her sister’s husband havin’ dinner, Peter’s house, and Pete’s brother dropped by.
“I mean, Marybeth didn’t marry
me
, for Christ sake—she married my brother, Peter. And as to what the hell
I
do, or did, no matter if it’s right or wrong, Peter never had a fuckin’ thing to say
or do with it. Don’t believe me then ask him. So how do
I
figure into this, Emmett bein’ superintendent? Never really understood that.” He growled, abruptly, like a dog frustrated chained.
“Anyway, like I say, I’m over there one night havin’ dinner, Peter-Marybeth’s house—which I did fuckin’
buy
it for them, goddamnit, gave them the fuckin’
money
for. Back when Peter’s makin’ chump change, workin’ an installer, back ’fore he started doin’ good. It’s not like I got no
right
there, don’t
belong
there.
“Anyway, I’m there havin’ dinner, catchin’ up with my brother, talkin’ various things, and at one point I ask him what he’s been up to lately. Not that I expect much of an answer—that being the type of question he doesn’t ask me very often, either, or expect much of an answer the few times he does. But this time, I dunno, I did, and he says they just took on what to him’s a fairly interesting client, kind of a challenge, really—‘The old Wheelers Moving Company headquarters building, not that I guess it’s that old—built around nineteen-seventy or so.’ And do I know where that is, so forth.
“Well as a matter of fact I do know. That’s the place me and Jimmy Locatelli got into the night after Jimmy heard the Collier family art collection was bein’ temporarily stored there, and the next day we took it. Right out the pike, just before the Charlton cutoff.”
“
Sure
,” Cistaro said. “I forgot you guys did that. All the Rembrandts in this collection, biggest one in private hands——”
“Cezannes, actually,” McKeach said. “Not quite as valuable as if they’d’ve been Rembrandts, but still, worth lot of money. All this crime-prevention equipment they had then, pressure plates and infrared rays, all that kind of fancy stuff every dog kennel’s got today but nobody had back then—no one could figure out how the hell we did it. And it was simple. We just got on our coveralls, got in the back of the truck while they’re loading it with the paintings the day before, up in Peabody. Guys from Wheelers
thought we’re with the estate; guys from the estate thought we’re with Wheelers. Rode in with the paintings that night, in the back of the trailer.
“That night while everybody’s focused onna warehouse and the yard, guards and dogs and lights all over the fuckin’ place, walkie-talkies all around, biggest worry I had was that Jimmy’s fuckin’ snorin’s gonna wake up one of those monster German shepherds Wheelers used to have around when they had real valuable cargo, and someone’ll search the truck. But they didn’t.
“And then the next day onna turnpike, me and Jimmy get the gas masks on, light off smoke bombs inna back. Cops behind it in the unmarked cars see the smoke all comin’ out, think the load just caught on fire. Radio the fuckin’ driver, ‘Pull over! Load’s on fire.’ Guys’re drivin’ it and all the escorts,
everybody
stops their cars and then comes piling out, this great scene beside the road, everybody runnin’ round, shootin’ off fire extinguishers and screamin’, ‘Someone get a fuckin’ fire truck!’ Drivers from the company pop the doors the sides and back the trailer? An’ while all of them’re piling in, lookin’ to see where the fire is, hopin’ they can put it out ’fore it ruins all the art, me and Jimmy light a long fuse on a string of two-inch salutes. And then we come piling out, shooting off our
own
extinguishers. Nobody pays attention to us; nobody even sees us. Jump inna cab, keys in the lock, start ’er up and wait a couple minutes, seems like a couple days, hopin’ no one notices engine’s started up again—and also that we didn’t make the fuckin’ fuse too long so someone finds the damned salutes, or steps on it and puts it out before the things go off. It seems like a couple
days.
“But then,
bang-bang-bang
, start going off, and that sets off this huge stampede, people jumpin’ out the fuckin’ trailer, now they think it’s gonna blow, an’ we’re watchin’ in the rearview mirrors, watch ’em fallin’ onna ground, gettin’ back so they’ll have cover, and I say to Jimmy, ‘
Hit it!
’ and he sticks it into gear.
“By the time they see what the hell’s goin’ on, figure out what happened to them, we’ve gone off an exit about two miles away, got the trailer on a culvert, throwin’ paintings off the bridge, and down below there we’ve got Jimmy’s little brother Joey and this other guy we had, with a Ford deuce-anna-half on the two-lane underneath. Me and Jimmy, laughin’ so hard we can hardly grab the paintings—could just barely hear the sirens catchin’ up to us when we tossed some more smoke bombs inna trailer and went slidin’ down that slope on our asses, laughing like bastards all the way.”
He laughed again with the pleasure of the memory. “That was one great fuckin’ day. Kind that makes you think you’ll live forever. Nothin’s ever gonna stop you now.” He snuffled.
“Anyway,” he said, “me and Peter like I said, two of us’re havin’ dinner, and he tells me about the warehouse, how Watchguard just took it on. ‘And naturally, of course,’ he says, ‘as long as it’s still vacant we’re not gonna keep a man on duty in there day and night, guardin’ empty space. We’ll have a man swing a patrol car by there, two or three times every day, three or four times every night, regular door-shake detail, and we’re on good terms with all the cops, so that’s all that it should need. If the cops see there’s something wrong, doesn’t look quite right to them, they’ll of course give us a call before they go bustin’ in. And if we find there is something we think they should take a look at, well then, we’d call them.
“ ‘But just the same, we don’t want to be bothering them every time kids start hangin’ around there weekends. Maybe use the parking lot to fly their model planes, drive their radio-controlled cars. Make ourselves look foolish.
“ ‘So, you get around, you hear things. You get wind there might be someone doing something there that doesn’t sound quite right to you, appreciate it if you’d, you know, take a look around the place. See what you can find out. And call me, you
know, if something’s wrong, something you can’t straighten out, and I’ll then call the cops.’
“So I been doin’ that ever since,” McKeach said. “I go there and I see something, then I take a look around. And if the guys I find in there’re reasonable people, we can do a little business. ’til Walterboy, they all have been. Now and then I duke Peter a few bucks, help with the kids’ college fund, which he appreciates—fuckin’ kids can
buy
Harvard now, if they want. I mean, if a guy’s own brother
asks
him, what else would a guy do?”
“Absolutely,” Cistaro said, “absolutely. I think it’s a beautiful thing.”
L
ILLIAN
W
EYMUSS
S
TOAT
—“D
O
CALL
ME
Lily,” she always said upon introduction; “Ducal Melilly,” Cheri Farrier christened her, snickering—lived with her second husband, Darren, in a grey white-trimmed two-story, seven-room, two-and-a-half-bath townhouse at 4 Gaslight Terrace, Number 7, in Framingham. Using about 2.8 percent of the million or so she’d accumulated in her investment portfolio by investing the quarter-million lump-sum settlement she’d received nine years before, pursuant to a prenuptial agreement, when her first husband, Wallace Weymuss, a former Memphis undertaker, divorced her (his fourth wife), she’d provided all of the 20 percent down payment of $27,000.
“Wallace was much older’n I was of course when we married—he was sixty-one and I wasn’t even
thirty
? But the way he lived and all, he’d stayed all tanned and muscled, very nice flat belly and all his parts still worked real good—well, you never would’ve known it.