Authors: George V. Higgins
“Because you … you didn’t have to,” Stoat said, somewhat bleary. “By then you knew and he knew what was involved, without talking about it … and all of you … made out just fine.”
“Well, so’ve you guys,” McKeach said, his eyes narrowing again. “You guys’ve got Carlo and all of his cowboys right by the short ’n’ curlies. Whole bagful of scalps for your personnel files. You ain’t done bad out of this either.”
“We realize that,” Farrier said soothingly. “All Darren’s saying, as I understand him, is still being new here he has some concern that we all know about where we stand. For the future.
Now that it looks like old Carlo’s group’s going. I think that’s all that’s concerning him now.”
“That what’s on your mind?” McKeach said to Stoat, his voice hard and flat.
“What is?” Stoat said. “I don’t understand your question.”
McKeach glared. “My question’s simple. I wanna know if what he just said, what Jack just said to me there, is about all that you got on your mind here.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Stoat said. He belched softly, pouching his cheeks and putting his chin down against the base of his neck. Then he lifted it again. “The way that I feel … what you’ve told me, tonight … is that you haven’t told me a lot. That tells me just where you think we stand now. With Carlo’s group now on the skids. I think what you’ve said leaves me and Jack—well, maybe not Jack—but leaves me … pretty much in the dark. And I’m … well, getting uneasy about this.”
Farrier, Cistaro and McKeach frankly studied him for a while, saying nothing. After he had rotated his gaze onto each of them twice without getting reassurance, he put his hands on the table, pushed his chair back, stood unsteadily, and said, “Gennelmen … ah meeting’s adjourned.”
C
ONVINCED
OF
SPRING
’
S
ARRIVAL
by the breezy cloudless afternoon bringing the first seventy-degree sunshine of the year, on the fourth Wednesday in April, Rascob in the old grey Town Car turned right off Old Colony Boulevard onto B Street in South Boston and immediately swung right again, into the off-street loading zone behind the two-story store on the corner. The building was whitewashed, its window and door frames painted emerald green. On the northerly wall under the four long narrow windows a foot below the top, three rows of bright green block letters eighteen inches high, decorated with a cluster of six bright green shamrocks, identified it in the top row as F
LYNN
’
S
S
PA
; in the second as offering Beer & Wine * S
UPERETTE
* Fresh Fish & Choice Meats Daily; and in the third offering Lottery, Newspapers, Cigarettes, Gov’t Checks Cashed, Money Orders, Fax.
Rascob drove the Town Car all the way into the narrow space remaining at the southeast corner of the chain-link fence enclosing the loading area, easing it carefully tight against the fence next to the shiny bronze ’96 Lincoln Mark VIII coupé John Sweeney had backed into the space nearest the building. He jammed the transmission into Park, shut off the ignition, reached around into the back seat and working by feel pulled a
large black nylon zippered duffel bag out from under his trenchcoat, then slid across the seat and, being careful not to ding Sweeney’s car, squeezed out through the passenger door.
The Naughton kid, his black hair cropped against his skull, his face and arms deeply tanned from his Patriots’ Day package weekend—four days and three nights in the Cayman Islands—showing off his muscles with a tight white tee shirt and beltless jeans riding low on his pelvis, using both hands slammed out onto the cement loading dock through the double-hinged wooden doors with the curved steel dolly bumpers on the bottom, letting them bang back and forth behind him. He came to the edge of the platform and leaned his left shoulder against the four-by-eight steel upright supporting the corner of the corrugated steel roof and siding closest to the street, shaking one cigarette out of a pack of Winstons in his right hand and snapping a flame up from a neon-blue disposable lighter with his left thumb. When Rascob had fully emerged from his car, Naughton shouted, “Max, my
man
,” exhaling a billow of smoke and grinning, his teeth gleaming.
“Well, Jesus, Captain Marvel, ain’t
you
pretty now,” Rascob said. “You’d’ve been that dark ten years ago, you would’ve gone to Southie High—judge would’ve bused you over here, all the other jigaboos.”
Naughton’s grin widened. “Max,” he said, “you’re gettin’ in deep shit, drivin’ that shitbox. Good King John says you embarrass his fine
ride
, parkin’ that old beater beside it every day. When you gonna give in, admit it, you gotta get a new car?”
“When you get your start date, the academy,” Rascob said, opening the trunk of the Town Car. It was nearly filled with small brown paper bags. “Soon’s I know you can get along ’thout the dough I’m always givin’ you to fix it.” He put the duffel bag into the trunk and began stuffing the paper bags into it.
“Well, Max,” Naughton’s kid said, “get ready to
shop
’til you
drop.
I’m in the class startin’ May.”
Rascob stopped his activity. Exaggerating his motions, he straightened up and turned to face the loading dock, leaving the paper bags and duffel in the open trunk. A gull overhead, flying north toward the Fort Point Channel, shrieked loudly. “
Son
of a
bitch
,” Rascob said, feigning amazement, “so
that’s
why you got the deep tan. And the very next week you get in. Made the minority quota work
for
you. You’re smarter’n I thought you were.”
Then he grinned. “Hey, though, congratulations.” He started toward the loading dock, extending his right hand, Naughton’s kid crouching and extending his right hand to meet him, but then Rascob stopped, held up his left forefinger, wheeled around, and slammed the trunk lid shut.
“Yeah, you’d
better
,” Naughton’s kid said. “Wouldn’t wanna go leavin’
that
open, someone come along an’ help themselves, the work.”
Rascob still grinning turned again and this time made it to the dock. “Yeah, but pity the guy who tried it,” he said. “He’d be one dead fuckin’ man.” He shook hands with Naughton’s kid, clapping him on the right elbow with his left hand. “But son of a bitch,” he said again, this time with undisguised pleasure, “that really is great news, Todd, just the
greatest
damned news. Your dad and mother must be very proud.” He laughed. “
Shit
,” he said, “old man must be
insufferable
, takin’
this
news to headquarters. Pity the people have to work with Emmett this week.”
The Naughton kid’s smile faded a little. He frowned and shook his head once. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I don’t think I’d be too sure.”
“Well, Jesus Christ,
why
?” Rascob said.
Naughton shook his head again. “Dunno,” he said. “I told him night before last, got home from over Hagan’s, get cleaned
up ’fore I went out—the department envelope’s waiting. So I opened it and made sure it said what I thought it did, and then I waited, he got home, before he went to work. And I showed it to him, told him.
“He said, you know, ‘congratulations,’ but he didn’t look that happy. ‘Hope you enjoy the job as much as I have. And at least try to treat it as well.’ But he wasn’t keen on it. Heart wasn’t really in it.”
“Really?” Rascob said. “The cop’s cop’s not happy, his son wants to be a cop? Doesn’t make sense. What’s his problem? Afraid you’ll get hurt or somethin’? Shouldn’t be; he never did, and old Emmett never ducked nothin’. He should have faith in his genes.”
Naughton shook his head once more. “He’s jumpy,” he said. He frowned. Careful to avoid splinters, he put his right hand knuckles down on the rough wooden floor of the loading platform and pivoted on it to jump down onto the ground in front of Rascob. “We know each other, right, Max?” he said. “I know I feel like that, at least.”
“Well, geez, so do I,” Rascob said. “Eight or ten years, isn’t it, you started pumpin’ gas at Hagan’s? Anything I can do?”
Naughton hiked up his jeans. “I dunno,” he said. “Gimme some advice, I guess.”
“Fire away,” Rascob said.
“My mother, ‘Lady Caroline,’ my father calls her that. He says we may all be peasants but she’s always been a true aristocrat. Her attitude’s always been … I dunno. She’s never put any pressure on us, what we’d be when we grew up. Never said much about it. Since Eileen and Ed and I’ve been old enough, seems like, say what we’d like to be, from her it always was that we should be whatever
we
wanted. Cowboys, firemen, pitchers for the Red Sox—‘anything but priests or nuns.’ Which surprised people now and then, they didn’t know her, but she meant it.
‘It’s an unnatural way to live. That’s why there’s so many disgraces.’ ”
He folded his arms and leaned back against the dock. “I don’t think any of us, growing up, ever once said we’d like to be a cop,” he said. “And Dad never said, even once, to consider it. ‘How about becoming a cop?’ But he never said we shouldn’t, either, touted us against it, like ‘too dangerous’—‘too hard on the family.’ Which of course we all knew that part anyway, growin’ up with him a cop. But he just never promoted the idea.
“Didn’t occur to
me
, I might wanna be a cop. Until one night last November, I don’t know why, everything just
got
to me. I’m still in college, second year at U Mass Boston, transferred over my Northeastern credits, year before. Not that there were that many—if I hadn’t
dropped
out, I would’ve
flunked
out.”
He creased his forehead. “That night it just dawns on me. I know exactly what I’m doin’. Hadda face it—just spinnin’ my wheels. Either I just wasn’t cut
out
for college or I wasn’t ready for it. Either way, didn’t matter. I was doin’ a shitty job of it.
“So I figured if I told him that, then for sure he’d go along with what I was gonna tell him I therefore hadda do next—stop doing it. Because that was one thing that he’d
always
harped on to us—‘if you’re gonna do a thing—I don’t care what the hell it is, mow a lawn or build a bridge—
do the damned thing right.
Never do a thing so that later when you look at it, you can’t be proud of it.’
“Wasn’t tellin’ him I’m stupid. We both knew I wasn’t—I just hated school, is all. There I am, I’m twenny-one, already two years behind when I should be graduatin’. Still livin’ at home, pickin’ up a few bucks fixin’ cars at Hagan’s Getty, workin’ three nights a week over Watchguard Security—Peter put me onna switchboard, dog-watch weekend relief, and usually I get a couple more nights, sometimes more, doin’ the patrol rounds for some regular, called sick or something. Plus what I get for
fillin’ in here, takin’ deliveries ’round inna truck, old people and shut-ins, Sweeney’s too cheap to hire full-time help. Like I do everywhere I work, generally makin’ myself useful doin’ things for people, need someone to help out.
“So, I’m makin’ a few bucks here and there, you know? Nothin’ steady—which I could have if I wanted, all I hafta do is ask; Peter’d hire me in a minute, told me he would, many times, this’s ’thout me askin’ him, go on permanent at Watchguard. But you know, I don’t say this, but what I think when he says it? ‘Right. Who the fuck wants that? Drivin’ around all night inna snow and rain, gettin’ outta the car and shakin’ doors at factories, shinin’ flashlights inna windows, spendin’ my life doin’
that? Ahhh
, I do not fuckin’ think so.’ Although that
is
how Peter started out, I mean; his first job with them was checkin’ doors, seein’ if they’re locked secure, all that kind of boring shit, and I do hafta say that it’s done all right by him. But still, I mean, that was also
okay
for him then—it isn’t okay for me. Now. I got better things to do. This I know.
“The trouble is,” Naughton said, “or at least the trouble
was
, then, it was that it was beginnin’ to look to me as though I
didn’t
know—I couldn’t tell you exactly what they
were
, you know? Those better things I had to do. Looked to me as though I was mostly goin’ nowhere, fast. Gettin’ older, gettin’
heavy
—which I was then, back last fall, packin’ weight on like a
bastard
; beer’d started gettin’ to me; hadn’t started workin’ out—and still I got no more idea what the
hell
I’m
doin
’ ’n I did when I was
twelve.
”
He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Wasn’t all that easy,” he said, “admittin’ that stuff to myself. I always been the type of kid when I was growin’ up, if I tried ah play some sport and found out I was no good? An’ no matter what I did, how long I played or practiced I was never gonna be? Like hockey—found out I was a shit hockey player and stopped playin’ it. And now this particular light last November, I finally see it—this college
thing of mine’s beginning to look like the first thing in my life I ever did where I been at it long enough to see that not only am I no good at it, can’t play this game at all—I don’t really want to. I just don’t give a shit.
Rascob pursed his lips and frowned. He shook his head. “Not really, no, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t follow you at all.”
“Oh,” Naughton said. He looked worried. “Aw right then, maybe
this’s
what I’m sayin’—this college thing of mine was beginning to look like the first thing in my life that I ever did where I’d been at it long enough to see not only am I no good at this, can’t even
play
the game—I don’t really
want
to, I don’t
give
a shit.
“This’s all
new
to me. It
was
like it was a
game
I was in, all right? But I’m playin’ by myself. Maybe playin’
with
myself.” He laughed. “But that night I could see, which I could not see before, that if I lost it, as I knew I was going to, it was gonna finish me.
“I am serious about this. If what I decided to do that night last November was try to tough it out as usual, keep on going just the same, until the fuckin’ game was over, sooner or later, maybe when I’m thirty, I would get a fuckin’ piece of paper—and what would that paper say? To me it would say that I’m some kind of Energizer fuckin’ Bunny, lots more like me inna store; I kept on going ’til I got it. And why did I do that? Because that’s what I fuckin’
do
—I keep on fuckin’
going.
Even though there’s no
point
in it; got no
idea
of where I’m
goin
’, anything at all, except that when I get there I know very fuckin’ well ain’t gonna mean one fuckin’ thing.