Authors: George V. Higgins
“So I do the time and get out, and sure enough, no flies on Brian G. Just like he said, Brian G.’s got something beautiful, nice and safe, lined up for me—collecting rent the bookies. In those days before they had the Lottery and the legal number, and also made it so all you guys could bug the bookies legal, those guys made very good, steady money. And even though I’d done some awful dumb things, back when I was young, I was not a stupid kid. So I know collecting bookie rents is something that if I don’t screw it up, I can do the rest my life, make a damned good living, and never meet another cop who’s on official business.
“But I’m still
young
, then. I don’t have
sense
enough, be satisfied with that, this nice quiet living that I’m making, more money’n I can spend. Not that I ever went in that much for livin’ high and so forth, but I
am
ambitious and I’m runnin’ late.”
He smiled tightly. “And after I’ve made money, I like to keep my money—see if I can make some more. I’ve always been the type of guy who no matter what he’s had goin’ on’s always liked to have a little something
else
, you know? A little something of my own, goin’ on the side.”
His expression was calm, his tone the patient monotone, varied by occasional emphasis, that an earnest instructor would use addressing interested novices. “Now like I said, Brian G. was a good guy. He didn’t mind guys thinkin’ this way.” He glanced around the table much as such a teacher would, making sure of comprehension. Cistaro was amused. Farrier was alert. Stoat’s eyes were bleary; his mouth was partly open.
“Darren,
hey
,” McKeach said, reaching out with his left hand to shake Stoat’s right forearm. “You still
with
me now, on this? You’re the one, asked me explain—don’t want you
sleepin
’ on me here.”
Stoat shook his head a little and opened his eyes fully. He moistened his lips. “No, no,” he said, “wide awake. Don’t you worry ’bout that.”
“Well, all
right
, then,” McKeach said, drawing his hand back. He picked up his teaspoon and toyed with it, fixing his gaze on the table, studying memory. “Brian G. was unusual. A lotta guys, the LCN guys, for example, they had a tradition. Old dagos called it ‘wetting the beaks.’ Younger guys—‘Havin’ a taste.’ And they
didn’t
mean, ‘Let’s you and me go have a drink.’
“The deal was that when you made a lot of money, more money’n you needed, and you wanted it to go to work—well, you know, you put it on the street. So it was makin’ more for you without you thinkin’ about it. And you could then concentrate
on doin’ what you’d been doin’ before, to make it all inna first place—so that you made even more. Well, fine by them if you did that, but you hadda do it with
them.
You wanted to make money off the money
you’d
made workin’ for them? You had to let them make money off it too.
“That was their rule, no exceptions. LCN guys always hadda get a piece of your investments. ‘It’s just a little piece,’ they’d tell you, ‘just the normal five percent. Not a very high price, the protection that we give.’
“Which it wasn’t, a high price, for an
outside
guy doin’ business with them. But
you
were the protection, the guy who went around to outside guys, if they either didn’t pay for workin’ their piece of the territory or butted in on some other guy’s protected turf. Your boss called you in and he told you about this, either him not gettin’ paid or guys not followin’ the rules, and so then”—without altering his calm expression and even tone—“you went to them and said, ‘Hey, you want your ears cut off, an’ have me stick ’em in your mouth? And then I cut your dick off and use it to then ram ’em down your throat? That what you want,
asshole
?’ ”
Stoat’s eyes were very wide now; his lower lip was slack.
“Which of course you probably couldn’t actually do, because when you cut the dick off, it probably wouldn’t
be
hard. Most likely be soft, you been talking to the owner like that.” He chuckled. “Fact you probably would’ve hadda feel around in his pants for it, all shrunken up ’n’ hiding, you decided, cut it off. But the point is that
you
doin’ this,
you
were the protection, the insurance—it was
you.
”
Stoat gaped. Farrier stirred uneasily in his chair. McKeach looked up at him inquiringly. “No, nothing,” Farrier said, fluttering the fingers of his right hand. “Go right ahead, what you’re saying.”
McKeach nodded and looked down again at the spoon. Farrier caught Stoat’s horrified eyes, and with his own gaze and a slight movement of his head warned him to alter his expression. Stoat shook himself again and resettled in his chair.
“Anna
reason
that it worked,” McKeach said, “was because people knew that if some guy pissed the boss off, he would tell you to go around and see him and do something like that to him—
and
that you would
do
it. The people he did business with
knew
this.
“That was the kind of thing I did, when I worked for Brian G. And since I’ve been working for myself, for me, when I hadda. So the people Brian G. did business with generally did what they were supposed to do, and the people I do business with, the same kind of thing. For me. So as a result Brian didn’t hafta
say
it very often, and I didn’t have to
do
it—very often.” He smiled. “Things change, but not too much.”
Farrier managed a small smile. Stoat, plainly alarmed, glanced at Cistaro. Cistaro shrugged and smiled. “
What
?” McKeach said, looking at Stoat. “You didn’t
know
this? That’s the way it works. That’s the way it’s always worked. You’re me and you are in the kind of business that we do, some guy owes you major money, say a couple hundred grand, or the same amount in something else that he was bringin’ in for you, and then the first thing that you know, the silly bastard goes and tries to fuck you over. What the fuck you gonna do? Gonna go to court and
sue
him?”
McKeach’s laugh was short and harsh. “No, you can’t do that. He
knows
you can’t do that. So, you would go and see him. Or you would send a guy like me or Nick to see him, and one of us, whichever one, would say something like that to him, about his fuckin’ ears and so on. Meaning every word. And then you would say, ‘Now you tell me, this’s what you want me to do?’ And then they generally paid.”
Now McKeach smiled. “Of course when they didn’t, when they made you make a point—it happens now and then, someone hasta try you out. Well, then, as much as you might not wantah, you hadda do something. Cut off
one
ear, maybe, like I heard somebody did with that asshole high-roller broker who lived down there in Cohasset—what the hell was his name there? McGillavray? Couldn’t seem to see his way clear, pay that one-thirty-seven marker he built up when the stock market kept on not doin’ what he thought it was gonna do? Said he didn’t have the money. Too bad, but hey, maybe sometimes it’s the truth—the guy really can’t pay.
“Well, you hate to see it when that happens, but you have to make him see that if he doesn’t
pay
, he’s gonna get
hurt.
Some people don’t believe you when you tell them that. They think when someone gets hurt, it was an accident. A car crash; they tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Not: someone else hurt them on
purpose.
So when some guy tries to give you some shit instead of money—‘I know I oughta pay, and if I had the dough I would; I just don’t have any now’—you have to make him
see.
“So, do that to him. Let him walk around with that a while, go to work with one ear missin’. Explain it to everybody—‘I was shaving, see? Use an old-fashioned straightedge razor, have to strop it every day. Genuine Rolls—my wife bought it in London for me, gave it to me Christmas. Really a beautiful thing, but you got to be careful with it. I wasn’t. My hand slips. And as you see, I cut myself a little. It’s nothin’ really serious. Doc says in a month or two it’ll grow back, good as new.’ ” McKeach paused, again, inviting laughter.
Stoat looked stricken. Neither Farrier, avoiding his eyes, nor Cistaro, keeping his eyes on McKeach, said anything.
“Right,” McKeach said, shaking his head. “Jesus, I don’t know.” He laughed. “Okay,” he said, “let’s say it didn’t actually
happen quite the way I told it. I don’t think he really did that—went to work with a bandage on his head an’ tried to explain it. That was a
fantasy
I had there, benefit of all you guys. Like the old TV show?
Fantasy Island
? Midget inna black tuxedo’d come runnin’ to the big tall handsome guy, white suit—‘Da prane, boss, da prane’? I was just sayin’ how it prolly would’ve been, if he
had
gone to the office. That make you feel better?”
None of the others said anything. McKeach looked defiant. “Look, even havin’ to stay home,
asshole found the money to pay us.
Even found some
more
money, someone built him a new ear. But the word still got around, no doubt about it. The week after
that
, in this town, quite a long time after that,
everybody
paid on time.
Nobody
was late.” He smiled. “And that’s why that kind of thing hasta happen sometimes—’cause it
works. Reminds
people—makes ’em
believe
again.”
Farrier snickered and gave Stoat a stern look. Stoat forced a chuckle. Cistaro looked at each of them and nodded, then looked back at McKeach, and with his face expressionless slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook his head once. He said, “That should do it, Arthur.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said, clearing his throat. “Well, anyway, the point is that anything you did, you went with them, the LCN, you always hadda do it so you stayed dependent on them. So they knew every dime you made, how you made it, and who off of, and could see if it looked like you might be building up a war chest of your own—might have some plans in mind. So they could then head you off. And that was what I didn’t like, them ever getting bigger in this town.
“Brian G. couldn’t see that—the LCN guys were a threat. Because he wasn’t like that. But I saw if they got a foothold, they’d take Brian out. Make us all work by their rules. Brian had the attitude that if you were hooked up with him, then that meant you
were with
him.
Just like if you were hooked up, then he was with
you.
And he was not gonna assume you must be cookin’ something up against him if in addition to the things that the two of you had goin’, that you had with him, you also had a few things goin’ belonged strictly to you. Like he had a few things goin’ that belonged strictly to him.
“I myself personally back around the time when all the trouble first began around here, you had people gettin’ shot and goin’ down—everybody wonderin’ the hell was goin’ on—I had quite a bit of money by then onna street. Plus which I was still makin’ more, myself, still workin’ for Brian, doing what I’d always done. So I had something to lose.
“I was not the only one. Before the shooting started, guys all over town’re doing good. Everybody makin’ money, and nobody gettin’ hurt? You had Hugo Botto, Hugo Bottalico; he had his business runnin’ good, his part of town. You guys’ll have to ask Nick about how that was, if that’s what you want to know, and I’ll stop talkin’ while he tells you. Because he was with Hugo then about the same way that I was with Brian G.”
McKeach paused, an expression of inquiry on his face. Farrier and Stoat looked at Cistaro. Cistaro shook his head and said “No” in a soft, clogged voice, then cleared his throat and said firmly to McKeach, “No, no, you’re doing fine. You were much higher up with Brian’n I was with Hugo anyhow, know much more about it. How it went, up at that level.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said, gazing at him and frowning. “Well, keep that in mind here now, my friend, all of this’s your idea. Tellin’ everything.”
“Darren’s ever gonna help us,” Cistaro said, “he’s gotta know this shit.”
“Yeah,” McKeach said, “right.” He turned to Stoat. “The basic thing you had was Hugo Botto and Nick here, and a couple other guys—they had Somerville and north of Boston. Maiden,
Medford, Everett. East of Route One, along the beach—Lynn, Revere, Saugus, and the North End—mostly LCN.
“Botto’s organization was a little bigger’n ours, by which I don’t mean that he had all that many more
guys in it
, but it was so spread
out
, a lot more ground to cover, and so he hadda have more’n just the one guy, like Brian G. had me, workin’ under him—to watch over all the other guys he had workin’ under him. And Nick was one of his. But except for size, Hugo and Nick and two more guys operated Hugo’s business in the parts of town he had just about the same as Brian G. and me did in the part of town we had, and
there wasn’t any trouble.
“Before the shooting started, only problem me and Brian G. had was the one you always had; it never went away. One or two guys, maybe more, but never more’n three or four, you thought were workin’ for you, with you; they would get together and decide they could run it all much better, and keep all of what came in, if they split off and took the part of your turf you had them working in.
“Say, the financial district—sports bookin’, loan-sharkin’, some fencin’—hot jewelry for the hotshots’ girlfriends. Rich territory. Now it’s gonna be
theirs
—no cut for you. And they can make it even richer, doin’ things you wouldn’t let them do—like getting on the import end of bringing coke and grass in, dealin’ in that shit. Which we never have allowed—still don’t to this day.
“So I don’t mean that the shootings came as a surprise. Sometimes it has to happen. But when guys started disappearing, and we didn’t know the reason, or where the hell they went—few days later one of them’d turn up with a couple in the head—that was when we started to worry.
“Not always, now; sometimes when someone disappeared—guys would do that all the time, get to fucking someone else’s broad, or someone else’s wife, then hear the guy involved found
out? And he wasn’t happy, he’d been asking around for them, sit down and have a chat. Guys in that position often would decide the best thing to do was get out of town a while. So that could be a reason why a guy would disappear.