Authors: George V. Higgins
“One-point-six of that now we’ve got with the Ford kid. Pretty soon, he tells me, we double-plus again.” McKeach
laughed. “We’re gonna need some more real estate pretty soon, I think. We do know the financing end.
“And the storage end, too, we know that.” He paused, frowning. “Not that it always works right.” He pointed his left index finger at Rascob. “That damn jigaboo, Junie Walters. You went there again today, Max?” Rascob nodded. “And he wasn’t there again, right?”
Rascob nodded. “I went there again and he wasn’t there. His gofer, there, Bishop, all dressed in black?”
“They
all
dress black,” McKeach said with scorn. “Think they’re all nigger Zorros or somethin’. Want you to think they’re that Fruit of Islam shit—once you see ’em you run for your life.”
“Yeah,” Rascob said, “well, this one is Bishop. I recognize him from last week. And the week before
that
——”
“An’ the week before
that
,” McKeach said. “Lemme think, now, just how long’s it been?” Then he nodded. “
And
also the week before
that
one.” He paused. “Did he give you the rent, the ten a week? No, of course not, the son of a bitch. He laughed in your face’s what he did.”
Rascob shrugged. “What he did, gave me nothin’ but
shit.
Different shit from the shit that he gave me last week, but still shit all the same—doesn’t matter. ‘The Man says to tell you he’ll see you next week. Or somethin’. Today he is
in therapy.
’ ”
“Right,” McKeach said. “Seventy
grand
he’s now behind. And he’s still got the stuff comin’ in, goin’ out. Or so my observers tell me.” He looked to Cistaro. “You see any need to discuss this? What needs to be done about this?
“Keep in mind now, I put this pieceah black shit inna hospital once, first time I got this kindah shit. Thought after I did it that’d be enough. Establish we’re serious. From what I understand, and my source isn’t perfect, I did a pretty good job. Junius had quite a time for himself. The burns that he got, he went into the lantern—apparently they weren’t that bad. Not life-threatening’s
what I am told. Some crocodile skin onna back of his neck—and his shoulder, too, what I’m told. His shirt caught on fire and it melted. Melted his skin along with it. But it should heal up all right, few minor scars. Nothin’ to worry about. He’s takin’ long fast walks now, get back in shape. Every morning, Jamaica Pond there? He’s got a big condo up in the Jamaica Estates there, walks around the whole pond every morning, at sunrise. Dorothy’s friend she worked with, she was at the Faulkner Hospital? Sees him out there, she goes out, way to work.
“The right eye? That is different. Dorothy says her Mass General friend hears at Mass Eye and Ear that he’s still got the patch over it—‘Most probably have it for life.’ Okay, he can do shirt ads.
“They also hadda wire his jaw shut. Last she got he was livin’ on mush—from the blender, you know? Raw cheeseburgers, drink through a straw. I hadda do that onna number of people, generally worked pretty good—but I
still
dunno if they put pickles and fries in. Hafta have Dorothy have her friend ask.” He paused a beat for the laugh and it came.
“Up ’til now I taught someone a lesson like that, it’s always worked pretty good.” He shook his head. “This time around, doesn’t seem like it did.” He sighed. “Maybe I’m gettin’ old.” He looked at Cistaro again. “But anyway, old or not, this’s one I think I should handle myself. You got any objection to that?”
Slowly and deliberately Cistaro shook his head. He presented the small smile.
“Okay,” McKeach said, and he nodded. “Important,” he said. “They have to know, I don’t forget these things.” Then he cleared his throat.
“Now,”
McKeach said, “last pieceah business. This morning—Max of course knows some of this—I get this call, and it’s from Jenny Frolio. Been years since I talked to her. She’s surprised I still know her voice. But what she’s got to say to me is that
Dominic’s sick and been taken to Quincy Hospital. Hasn’t been feelin’ good, past two-three days, and then this morning around five
A.M.
, which is when he usually gets up and comes upstairs, he doesn’t. See, she doesn’t say this but what I assume is that since they had the second-floor addition put on there, she’s been sleepin’ the bedroom upstairs and he’s still been sleepin’ down. In other words, not in the same bed, you follow me. Although from some the other things she said I think he was still comin’ after her from time to time, get his ashes hauled. How often naturally I do
not
know, but I gather enough to suit her.
“So anyway, she gets the coffee goin’ and goes downstairs to check him out. ‘After all,’ she says to me, ‘the man
is
eighty-six, and I don’t care how strong he’s always tellin’ me he is, showin’ me his muscles like he thinks I’m still sixteen again; still all I think about, he looks in a bathing suit—he’s
not
a young man anymore. So it’s quite natural he might have somethin’ wrong with him, and therefore, get my robe on, go down and check on him.
“ ‘He
looks
all right, he’s awake, lyin’ there, but he still hasn’t got up yet. So naturally I say to him—because this isn’t like him, lie around in bed like this after he’s woken up. Usually as soon’s he’s awake, he’s onna floor doin’ his situps, eighteen situps every mornin’. And please don’t ask me “How come eighteen?”, “Why isn’t it fifteen or twenty?” I dunno the answer that either; I don’t think he does himself. Just, eighteen is what he does, and been doin’, many years. But this morning he isn’t. So I say, “Why?” to him and he says to me, got this funny look on his face, “I dunno. I don’t feel good. My stomach doesn’t feel good, like I ate something, you know? And my
chest
here, it feels kind of funny.”
“ ‘So I say, “All right then, I’m callin’ Doctor Farmer.” He’s this young doctor that they got now over at the hospital that took over a few years ago, Doctor Melia retired. I like him all
right but not Dominic, he doesn’t. Not that there’s anythin’ wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with him at all; just Dominic doesn’t like change. But it isn’t that, he doesn’t like him. It’s he just says, “No, don’t call Doctor Farmer, get the
ambulance.
Ambulance quick.”
“ ‘And so then, well, I know that there’s really something wrong, and that’s what I better do, but before I can do it, even leave the room, he gets this look across his face, and
groans
, like this:
“Ahhhhh,”
you know, very loud, and then his whole body sort of
comes up
inna bed, and his eyes—go completely wide open. And then he starts to sort of
relax
, you know? Like air goin’ out a balloon. And that’s when I know that I don’t think it’s gonna matter too much how long it takes the ambulance, to get here. This’s it for Dominic. My Dominic ain’t gonna make it.’
“And she was right—he didn’t,” McKeach said. “I guess he was still technically alive when the EMTs got to him, said a couple things to them but it was hard to understand him. The left-hand side his face, and the whole left side his body, I guess, that was all kind of paralyzed. But then he had another one when they had him on the stretcher goin’ out the ambulance, and sometime after that probably while he’s inna truck. Anyway, when he got the hospital they tried a few more times revive him with the paddles on his chest, but nothin’ they did seemed to do it. So Dominic is finely dead.”
“I assume you’ll be goin’ the funeral?” Cistaro said. “I know you and him’re never
that
close, but you did know the guy a long time.”
“Over forty years,” McKeach said. “But that don’t mean I’ll go his funeral. He was one of the guys I inherited from Brian. I don’t even think
them
two were that close. Dominic didn’t look all that cut up to me, I saw him after Brian G. went down. Far’s I could tell, all that interested him was who he paid now that
Brian’s dead, and I said, ‘You’ll be now payin’ me, my guy, the same guy. The same guy you been paying for Brian.’ And that was okay with him. Forget now who it was, but two guys before you, Max, the guy before Nino Giunta. ‘He now works for me. So from your end it all works the same.’
“And he then said to me, ‘If someone interfered with me, at any time, I always knew I could call Brian.’ His protection, you see, that was what concerned him. His insurance he was payin’ for.
“And I said to him, ‘Well, that’s what I been sayin’. Someone gives you some shit, you give me a call, and I promise you, he won’t give you no shit after that. Like I just told you, we’re all gonna miss Brian, but I am a guy Brian sent if you called, so from your end it’ll all work the same.’ And he was happy—that’s all there was to it.
“And besides,” McKeach said, “I couldn’t go the funeral if I wanted, let the FBI take pictures of me and everybody else there, have ’em inna paper—‘Local hoods all seen at funeral’—’cause the funeral is all over. Almost over, anyway. She was having that taken care of this afternoon.
“I said to her
’What?’
when she said that to me, I asked her when the wake’s gonna be, make Max go by for me, pay my respects. ‘Funeral’s this afternoon? What is this, Dominic’s Jewish? Gotta bury him by sunset, something?’
“She said No. Seems this’s just how he wanted it, both of them did. ’ “No church for me when I’m dead,” he used to say to me, every time someone he knew died and he hadda go to the funeral. “Because otherwise the family and people think I’m mad at him, I don’t like him or something. So I go. The only time I go to church is when there is somebody dead there that I like, and then I go. And it’s not even for them—they are dead, don’t know I’m there. Got no idea I came. It’s for the family, all right? That I don’t know, don’t know me. Doesn’t make no
sense. I don’t go to no church while I am alive. I don’t want nobody takin’ me to no church when I’m dead.”
“ ‘So I do what he told me,’ she said. ‘Called the undertaker when they come out from the room at the hospital where they’ve got him and they tell me he is dead. Tell him like Dom told me to, he already made arrangements—“My husband’s dead. Please come and get him. Take him away, a wooden box, no embalming, anything, and have him cremated. When they cool off put his ashes in something, bring them to me at my house.” ’ Then she said what she’s gonna do is ‘like he told me—take him across the street tomorrow night and sprinkle him on the tide going out, “and that is all you’ll need to do—that’ll take care of it.” So that is what I’m gonna do,’ is what she told me,” McKeach said, laughing. “I imagine she will.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Rascob said, “never laid eyes on the woman, but she must be as tough as he was. That’d be one tough broad indeed.”
“Oh, she is,” McKeach said. “Jenny’s got some wildcat in her. One hot number, she was young. Probably still is. But why am I talkin’ you about her? You’re gonna find out, get to know her for yourself.”
“She’s gonna run the book now?” Cistaro said, before Rascob could. “Make the loans and everything?”
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” McKeach said. “Also gonna run the store. Last thing that she said to me was have Max stop by the Beachside tomorrow and she’ll have the bags there for you. ‘Then we work out how us two’re gonna handle it now on. Dominic liked to go the store at three, stay to close it up. Way I always liked to do it back when I was working there, I liked to open in the morning, make sure everything was all right, and then if I felt like it, you know, maybe I go home for dinner, Dominic don’t need me there. But in those days, I was young.
Been a long time, I been there. So we’ll see what I like to do now, I been back there for a while.’ ”
“I didn’t know she ever worked at the store,” Rascob said.
“Oh, sure she did,” McKeach said. “That’s how the two of them met. Dominic hired her while she’s still in high school to keep the books for him—strictly against the law, of course, minor inna liquor store, even in those days, but she kept out of sight in back. She was smart and her family was poor; she worked hard.
And
she was a good-lookin’ kid, nice setta tits on her. She knew this, of course, that she was built like a brick shithouse; plus she had what in those days some people called ‘pep,’ by which I think they meant ‘sexy.’ Now here’s this mature guy, he’s a success; sure, he’s also twenny-five years or so older’n she is, but he’s got some money, knows how to behave; he obviously likes her, and compared to those clumsy high-school boys? Wow. So pretty soon nature takes its course, and they make the trade, standard deal. He gets her pants off; she gets him to marry her.”
“Never had any kids,” Cistaro said.
“Not’s far as I know,” McKeach said. “Dunno whose decision that might’ve been. What I do know is that when Nino came on the scene——”
“This’d be Nino Giunta,” Rascob said.
“Nino Giunta, correct,” McKeach said. “Nino, a big, funny, good-lookin’ guy, knew how to make a girl laugh, only four or five years younger’n Jenny. A year or two before you took over the route, dunno what brought her name up, I said something to Nino about how’s my old girlfriend Jenny. Not that she ever was that, but when I was goin’ there, for Brian G., I’d always looked forward to seein’ her, she was a pistol. Nino said he knew just what I meant, he liked her too, but he didn’t see her no more. Said he hadn’t seen her in almost a year; one day it’d dawned on him, all of a sudden, he hasn’t seen her a while. ‘She’s not workin’ the store anymore.’
“So I said to Nino, not thinkin’ about it, ‘What is she, knocked up or somethin’?’ Because after all, this’s gotta be, what—twenny years ago then? She’s around forty? Wasn’t too far-fetched—could’ve been that.”
Now McKeach smiled. “So like I said, I said that to Nino, ‘Got herself knocked up, did she?’ And I see that Nino don’t wanna answer that. In fact Nino wants nothin’ to
do
with this subject—wants to talk about somethin’ else,
anything
else, except Mrs. Dominic Frolio. So, okay, he won’t talk about her, but I’ve gotta
needle
him, just a little—otherwise he thinks I’ve gone soft.
“ ‘Well, didn’t you at least
ask
?’ I say to Nino. ‘She might not be pregnant. She could be sick. Dom’d be hurt if he thought I didn’t care, knew his wife was sick and I didn’t call. Nino says No, he didn’t ask, he’d ask the next time he was there. But I know he wouldn’t, he had no intention, and I never asked him again.