Authors: George V. Higgins
“The reason’s Al DeMarco. One man—Al DeMarco. This was all his idea, and I don’t think he even knew, at the time he’s having it, just what the hell it was. What it would turn into. What it all would mean. So if you think you don’t understand it, coming in now like you’re doing, well, maybe none of us do, either, really know what’s goin’ on.
“Al. The first time I went away Al was already here, here with you guys, FBI. But he was new then. I knew him but not really that
much.
And he was just a kid. We were
all
kids then. Al and me and Nickie, although I’m not sure I knew Nickie yet. I don’t know if Al did, if they knew each other. He might’ve.”
“This would’ve been when, now?” Cistaro said.
“Fifty-three,” McKeach said, looking solemn. “Went away in fifty-three. I was gone ’til sixty-two.” He opened his blue eyes very wide, as though taking in a vista otherwise too vast to comprehend. “Over forty years ago, all of this got started.
Everyone
was just a kid.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Jesus, forty years it’s going on. Al’s been gone now, what, the last eighteen? Me and Nick’re the only ones still around, ’ve been involved since the beginning, an’ we’re old men now. Like Ted Williams, something. And it’s still going strong.” He pursed his lips. “It’s really something, isn’t it? When you think about it?” he said. He seemed not to expect an answer. He looked at Cistaro. “Anyway,” he said, “you know DeMarco then? ’Cause I know he was around then, I come back from Leavenworth.”
“No,” Cistaro said. “I don’t think so. Didn’t know DeMarco then. Would’ve been right after when I got back from Korea. I was in San Diego one year, little
less
’n one year, ten-eleven months. Thought I might stay out there. Nice and warm. But what was I gonna do there? Didn’t know nobody—all the guys I knew there I knew from the service. Pretty soon, they all went home. So that’s what I did, after a while—need to have your friends around.
“Still livin’ off my service pay then, what I saved up in the navy and I got from playing cards. So when I get back I didn’t do anything, almost a year. Because basically I didn’t hafta, had the time to learn ropes. How things’d changed, I was away. Didn’t know where anybody fitted into anything. Who the players even were. An’ that included Al DeMarco.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said. He considered that for a while. He nodded. “Anyway,” he said, looking at Stoat again, “DeMarco was, and is, the key to all of this. And now I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know he’s still
alive
.” He looked at Farrier. “Al DeMarco still alive?”
“You know, I don’t know,” Farrier said. He looked at Stoat. “You got any idea, Darren, Al’s still among us?”
Stoat feigned exasperation. “Now how the hell would
I
know?” he said. “Everybody up here’s always talking, Al DeMarco, Al DeMarco.’ I never kept track. All I know, I know his
name. That’s it—didn’t even hear
that
, until I got up
here.
Since then I heard a lot of things. But all of them since I got here. Before that,” he said, shaking his head, “I knew
nothin
’, the guy. I ran into him on the street now, he could
bite
me—I wouldn’t know who he is.” He looked resentful.
“Well, I didn’t know,” Farrier said. “You were down in Washington, did a lot of stuff in personnel and so forth. So I thought, you know, it could be, might’ve run across him someplace, processed papers, current status, so forth.”
“No,” Stoat said vehemently, shaking his head, “take my word—it never happened.”
“
Oh-kay
,” Farrier said elaborately, “we have now got
that
established.” To McKeach he said, “All
I
know is he’s retired—retired for what I guess’d have to be at least the second time. I got that from Fogarty, few weeks after I came in here. He was goin’ down to Florida for some big dinner in Al’s honor. One of the racetracks on the west coast, don’t know now which one it was. He’d been their head, security, and done quite a job for them, so now that he was retiring, I think this’s what Fogarty said; was turning seventy-five and this time he was gonna
do
it, really hang it up for good. So they’re givin’ him a time.
“Way I got it from Fogarty, this’d
not
been one ah those window-dressing cases where they hire a retired FBI guy to buff up the public image—who cares if he still can feed and dress himself? This was one bad situation. The DA was all over them for runnin’ boat races—you could find out Tuesday before which horse’s gonna win the fourth on Wednesday, you knew the right people.
All
that shit—dopin’ horses, fixin’ the trick bets, you know? The doubles, the perfectas, the trifectas, the exotics? All kinds of bad things. Licenses in jeopardy, stewards onna take, horsemen makin’ statements sayin’ they were pulling out. Had a lotta people worried; the track was a big part of the economy there.
“Well, DeMarco went in, and gradually after that the boys found out the rules’d changed. It took him a
hell
of a long time, but he finally got it cleaned up. And before he got it straightened out at least one guy, fairly well-known name, too, related to a senator—Entwhistle, I think it was—disappeared for several months; they thought he’d skipped to Brazil. But then he turned up; he’d been murdered. Found him in the trunk of a car at Miami Airport, and this’d been a guy with
clout.
So, had to’ve been a professional job. Al did not have an easy job there. I know it took him a while.”
McKeach and Cistaro gazed attentively at Farrier. They did not react or look at each other.
“Ah, anyway,” Farrier said, shaking his head as though to clear it, “I do know DeMarco’s retired, and if Fogarty knew him half as well’s he thought he did, he’s most likely playing golf.”
McKeach thought, nodding. The others waited. “
Golf
,” he said at last, drawing it out. “Fuckin’ waste of time
that
is.” He drank some coffee, black. Farrier used sugar and cream and pushed the containers toward Cistaro.
“Anyway,” McKeach said, “the first fall I took, it was basically what it usually is, some wise young punk goes to jail—being stupid. What I did, I believed if you went in on a thing with Bernie Gallagher, you didn’t have to worry. He was Brian G.’s brother, and therefore if he got his tail caught in the crack—because
he
fucked up on some
other
little piss-ant job that you weren’t even in on—being Brian’s brother he would
never
then just turn around and save his own miserable ass by givin’
you
up on the first job, the one you did with him—while leavin’
him
self completely out of it.”
He shook his head. “You
knew
he would never do that, so much you never even
thought
about it, that he might.” He drank some coffee and then set the mug down, clasping his hands around it. “And he did,” he said.
“Oh, nice,” Farrier said.
“Yeah, very nice,” McKeach said. “The only reason that I didn’t have somebody clip him then, right off the bat, was because when Brian found out what his asshole brother’d done, he made a special trip himself up to Billerica where they had me, and gave me his solemn word; he told me if I’d suck it up, and didn’t pay off brother Bernie, like I had a perfect right to, then when I got out, well, he’d make it up to me, give me something really good—and take care my family, I was away.
“This was important to me. By then my father was really sick. After he retired, booze got him. Nothin’ else to do. Down at Butchie Morgan’s every morning by eleven—mother wouldn’t have the stuff in the house, what it was doin’ to him, and I didn’t blame her. But at that point the reason, what was doin’ it didn’t matter. Peter was only fourteen. He couldn’t do anything for them without droppin’ out of school, which I knew from doin’ it was not a good idea. If I was goin’ away they needed someone lookin’ out for them. Brian G. said he would do that?
Banks
took Brian’s word. I said, ‘I’ll take the fall.’
“What Bernie G.’d put me in on was this big armored-car job in Methuen back in nineteen fifty-one, Daisy Arnold and them guys? Killed a Brinks guard. Got the chair, but it took two years to catch ’em? I wasn’t on the job itself; wasn’t anywhere
near
the place the day it happened—didn’t even know about it until
after
it’d happened. All I did was, only connection at all that I had with it, was me and Bernie, I was doin’ him the favor—we stole four cars they used when they were planning it, following the truck around and seein’ where it went. But that guard dying, and then Daisy and them makin’ it to Canada? Never should’ve come back, never inna million years—should’ve known what’s gonna happen, they did. Once you run, you keep on runnin’ ’til you
know
the heat is gone.”
He scowled. “But anyway, before that, when the cops finely
got ’em? If the cops knew who you were, and what you looked like, before, and you were even in the
state
the day they did it, you were radioactive. Didn’t even hafta ask; you just knew it—someone hadda hard-on for you, liked you real good for it. I was in the state and the cops knew who I was, and I knew who it was that did it because I did some of the stuff for them, but I didn’t know where they were and if I had’ve known, well, still, I wouldn’t’ve told the cops.
“So the cops naturally knew this, and they ran me, and I didn’t. I got fifteen and did eight, old bastard Judge Ford, for doin’ a favor for Bernie. That made me Kitty House’s trophy; he was PD Boston. He’s the one made Bernie flip and Bernie gave him me. Kitty gave me to the feds.
“Kitty wasn’t a bad guy. I actually got so I kind of liked him. Used to see him now and then after I got out. He would come around, have a little chat with me. By then I think he felt bad for me, just a fresh kid I was then—gettin’ all that time for what I did? Which was really nothing, you came right down to it, once they had Daisy and them, guys who really
did
it. If they
didn’t
have ’em? Sure—‘Make the little bastard sweat, and if he doesn’t tell us hit him with the
big
hammer.’ But by the time I go to trial, they’ve got Daisy and them. An’ I still got
fifteen
? Just for stealin’ a few cars? It was way too much.
“Kitty was just tryin’ to be sure of no hard feelings. Just doing his job—I understood that. But once Bernie tipped me in and the wheels began to turn, what he could do about it? There was nothing he could do. So I
liked
him, all right? I had nothin’ against him. But I never got too close with him, you know? Because of that very thing—what can this guy, you know, do for me? Not just
to
me;
for
me. And, no reflection on him, he just couldn’t.
“Now with Al and Fogarty and you guys, one fed right after another—you
can
do things, and that’s why we’re all here. It
ain’t
love
, why we’re doin’ this, any of us; what we’re doin’ here, this is
business.
Boston PD? Kitty House could do things
to
me, put me in jail, but otherwise he couldn’t do nothin’
for
me.
“Emmett Naughton? Same thing, couple years later. Also triedah get next to me. He makes detective, comes around. Naturally, he’d do this. I knew Emmett a long time, from the town. We’re growing up, he’s one of the guys—always see him around. His father was a good shit. He was with the Edison there. He’d help a guy out, had some bad luck, so his lights at least didn’t get shut off. Emmett’s the same kind of guy. Him and my brother, Peter—married sisters. I could’ve helped Em, I would’ve. Question never came up.
“I
have
thrown a few things his kid’s way. Todd. While he’s waitin’ his name to come up, get onna cops. He keeps my cars, couple my friends’ cars, runnin’. Also keeps his mouth shut. So I pay him more’n it’s all worth. A very nice family, the Naughtons.
“So when Emmett approached me, back then—this’s
before
he’s married—I’m friendly, but I never do anythin’ for him. I don’t think he really expected me to. It was like he was playin’ it safe. Like he could’ve thought, ‘Hey, someday someone might come around and ask me, “You must know McKeach. You come from the same neighborhood, grow up about the same time? How come you never triedah talk to him?” ’ And he would then be able to say, ‘Well, I did, back in—’ whenever it was, years ago, now. ‘But it never went anywhere.’ See, to me he was like Kitty—a very nice guy, but he couldn’t do nothin’ for me. He just didn’t have the resources.
“Anyway,” McKeach said, “I am still in Billerica. I been tried, convicted, sentenced, and I’m waitin’ transportation to the joint where I’m gonna do my time. All I’m doing’s the only thing I can do—stayin’ outta trouble. I got all this time to do, which I still say wasn’t right, at least I wanna get out when I am supposed to, all the good time I can get.
“Al DeMarco comes to see me. He was also still pretty new here then, travelin’ around town, checkin’ things out, strikin’ up a few acquaintances, few guys he might like to know. And I knew he’d been one of the FBI guys, the Methuen armored-car case. But when he came to see me, I had Brian’s promise in my pocket. Too late for Al to do anything for me. So the day Al showed up I wasn’t inna market for any new friends who’re cops.
“And anyway, as even
you
prolly know, Darren, when you’re in prison, you do
not
want people who’re in there with you gettin’ the impression you’re real cozy with the cops, any kind of cops at all—and that included you guys, FBI, in
spades.
I know guys wound up with shanks in their backs, got that kinda reputation, havin’ the wrong kind of friends. So all Al got the day he came to see me—
obviously
FBI, ‘always make a good impression,’ new suit, clean white shirt, dark blue tie, fresh haircut, shoes shined and everything—no one in jail lookin’ at him would’ve thought he’s Groucho Marx.”
McKeach did not smile, but Farrier did. “But as good as he looked, all he got for himself that day was an inside look at the prison. I don’t think he liked it that much, but at least he could get his gun back and walk out.