Authors: George V. Higgins
“
We get them inna car, just barely, the two Maytags—hadda put the backseat down, filled up the whole back. And what I do, I then drive Hugo’s car with the machines in it, an’ have McKeach and his two guys follow me in his car—which they would’ve hadda anyway even if they had their own car—because they’re both pretty big and there’s no room for them inside of Hugo’s Olds. And anyway I dunno how much weight the springs in Hugo’s Olds can take before they break, in case I hit a pothole, something, with the Maytags inna back.
“
And so we do that. Take it our first house we’d just bought then in Tuttleville, me and Madelyn, this part of Hingham down there over by the dump that used to be there then with little houses and a sandpit there, now it’s all filled up with big ones, and we get the machines out of Hugo’s car and in the house, and hook ’em up—and it’s just like Hugo said. Madelyn’s as happy as a little pig in shit, ’cause she has got two new things she can tell her friends she’s got, I just got them for her. That always made her very happy—didn’t matter what it was, when I bought her things, ’cause that was all she cared about, having things were new. Especially if all her friends, they didn’t have one yet.
“
And then we mashed up the box the drier came in and put it in the washer box, and put that back in Hugo’s Olds. See, there’s all these markings onna carton that I don’t know what they mean; even where this washer came from. All I know is that I got it free, over at the Navy Yard, from two guys that I only seen once in my life, I’m not even sure their names, so I’m pretty sure it’s hot. For all I know there’s something on the box that if the people own the units get their hands on it again they may not then know who stole it, but if that box is at my house then they’ll be able, make a pretty good guess who’s got ’em. So I’m gonna take the box back into Inman Square over there in Cambridge, which’s where I’m meetin’ Hugo. He told me he hadda meet some guy he knew there, give his car back to him there. And also ask him he knows some place I can dump the box, so it don’t come back to haunt me.
“
So I go in this place where he was, leave his wagon parked outside, and he’s in there, like he said, with this guy that I don’t know. And I tell him my problem. And Hugo says when I meet him, ‘Yah, I know where you can take it. You just follow me in your car and I’ll show you exact place.
’
“
So I do that and where he goes, we go this big construction site out by Fresh Pond there, they’re puttin’ up this huge motel. Apartment complex, something. Very dark, lots of equipment—huge bulldozers, crane. Wonder no one steals that stuff, they just leave it all around. Must be worth a lot of money. Put it onna flatbed, something, just haul it away. Must be no one does, I guess, but then I don’t know.
“
So anyway, I follow him in there, I’m expecting him to stop and show me, I’m supposed to dump the carton, I’ll then get out and help him do it. Pull it out the back his car and leave it there, ’til someone buries it ’long with all the other shit they got there just lyin’ around. And he does stop, but then the lights on his car don’t go off, so I don’t know if this’s it or if maybe this’s not the place, he’s just lost or something. Trynah get his bearings. So I wait. But nothing happens. Well
,
I’m not sitting there all night, so after a few minutes I get out of my car, go over to his, and he’s still in the driver’s seat, and I see that he is dead. Someone shot him inna head.
”
There was a brief period of soft laughter from several people on the tape.
“
Right. Well, I dunno who did this but there’s one thing I do know and that is someone has shot Hugo, and whoever this person is, he knows that I work with Hugo, so if he’s still somewhere around there and he sees me there with Hugo I am liable, get shot next. So I’m not hangin’ around there. I get the fuck out, and two or three days later, Tuesday, Wednesday, I guess, I find out that I was right. Because the people who’re working the construction site go back there after the weekend, they find Hugo in his car, but they don’t know it’s him. They don’t find out it’s him for another couple days, because apparently what happened after I got out of there, whoever shot him in the head also set the car on fire while he was still in it. Some kind of stuff burns very hot, like homemade napalm, maybe, and just totally destroyed the thing. Not only just the boxes, which after all’re only cardboard, few slats onna bottom, reinforcement, but everything ’Cept Hugo’s bones—just his bigger bones’re left. Anna paper said that even then they still weren’t sure, not completely anyway, if it was even him that died—just that they know he’s missing and the Olds’d been his car, so what they hadda do was they were only calling it ‘a tentative ID.’
“
And so then, after that, I decided I’d better get myself some backing there, because then with Hugo gone you could say I was alone. No one to protect me. And that’s when I joined McKeach.
”
“Now Carlo,” Hinchey mouthed.
“
McKeach was in the box.
”
“Cistaro.”
“
No, not when they found the car. See they didn’t find the box at all. Least the paper didn’t say it, that they’d found a box. Box wasn’t even mentioned. Box’d burned completely up.
”
“Now this’s Carlo again,” Hinchey said. “First you hear him, he’s laughing—but you can tell he’s impressed. What I can’t figure, is it the story he just heard, or Cistaro tellin’ it? I think it’s Cistaro telling. I think they all knew the story all along, ’m I right? Sort of Gangland’s Greatest
Hits
Night? That McKeach went and hid in the Maytag box while the Frogman went into the Inman Square Tavern for Hugo, knowing that when Hugo came out he’d take them to a safe place to shoot him. Where did Cistaro get the extra car he used to follow Hugo’s Olds? It had to be McKeach’s, ’cause McKeach was in the box.
“Nick and McKeach had the guy set
himself
up—got him to pick his place to die. And
that’s
what these hoods here’re enjoying so much—hell’s bells, they’re lapping it up. This’s an old story to them, their version of Mother Goose Tales. They’ve heard it all told before.”
“Sure,” Farrier said. “They like their war stories just as much as we like ours. It’s like the Church’s oral tradition, the deposit of faith—doesn’t matter if no one can prove it, if everyone knows that it’s so. What keeps the faithful faithful.”
Hinchey frowned but said nothing and pushed Play again. The laughter came up.
“
Well, no, not when they found it, he wasn’t. McKeach’s never there when they find someone. That’s how he’s lived so long.
”
“Cistaro,” Hinchey said.
“
McKeach is a reliable man. You can depend on him because for him it isn’t work, he has to force himself to do. Or something to be feared. I’ve never seen him so juiced as when he’s done a guy. Never. I’ve often thought, ‘Tonight the woman who is with him is in for a very long hard ride.’ You must know this. You’ve used him yourself.
”
“Carlo.”
There was a gruff chuckle on the tape. “
Yes, I imagine she would be at that. A very reliable man.
”
Hinchey shut off the Ampex. Then he turned back to Farrier. “Okay,” he said, “what do we do?”
Farrier showed surprise on his face. “ ‘Do’?” he said. “ ‘Do’ about what?”
“About one of our top-echelon informants confessing that he conspired, and was an accessory before and after, in the murder of Hugo Bottalico. And is therefore to be charged as a principal in the commission of murder in the first degree, committed in furtherance of an ongoing racketeer enterprise. Which you know and I know is murder, by the
other
prize pigeon, one of the few kinds of activity we’re not allowed to sanction. Or overlook when it’s done. Grounds for dismissal. And prosecution. Of
us.
”
“Nothing,” Farrier said. “What you’ve got on that tape is an uncorroborated story Cistaro told last fall about an event that he alleges happened over thirty years ago. I will bet you a beer that if we go back now and review the evidence and the reports of the cops and the docs and forensics specialists who investigated that case, we would find that they did a good job. And that when they concluded—in pre-DNA days—they weren’t even sure who the victim was, much less who did it, they reached the right result.
“Think we can do better now? Yup. We can dig up the big bones and establish conclusively that they’re what held Hugo upright and he was guest of honor at the roast. We can prove that the navy taught Nick the Frogman how to use everyday substances to make basic napalm at home, and that it burns at temperatures high enough to consume all but the biggest pieces of an individual carbon-based life form. We can prove that Nick and McKeach shared a motive for wanting Hugo to say good-bye. And that will be just about all we can prove to establish this murder case—all the rest would be, as sarcastic judges like to say, ‘nothing but mere speculation.’
“Now,” Farrier said, tilting back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head, “Brother Stoat and I’re dining this evening with our prime top-echelon informants. His career and future depend at least as much as mine on the success of this case against Carlo. Shall I ask him to set an extra place, so you can share your views on this sensitive matter with him, before our guests arrive? I can tell you your views on it won’t make him happy, but if you say so, I will do it.”
Hinchey frowned. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m on a panel tonight up in Salem, regional Fathers for Justice. Agreed to it three months ago.”
“Then you should do that,” Farrier said. “And let the past bury the past.”
T
HE
AROMA
OF
D
ARREN
S
TOAT
’
S
signature chicken cacciatore filled the condominium at Number 7, 4 Gaslight Square in Framingham at 6:38 that evening when Farrier arrived, as usual, about forty-five minutes early for a dinner with Cistaro and McKeach. Cheri had suggested the policy to him when he first described to her his misgivings about Stoat’s fitness as an OC squad chief. “Honey,” she said, “if he looks to you like he’s just not up to it, and he’s not just plain stupid, think how
scared
he must be, for the very same reason. He has to
know
, and also know you feel that way. Have to face it, hon; you can stand and sling the shit with the best of them—you just
became
Soot Barillo—but even when you’re bein’ a completely different person, you’re no good at all at hidin’ what you think. That’s why you were so good under cover—you got
into
the character,
became
the guy they asked you to pretend to be. And so people who met you as him, believed you
were
him—you
were.
“You think he’s not up to it, dealin’ man to man with your favorite gangsters? Then count on it, darlin’—he
knows
that’s what you think. And that’s makin’ him more nervous’n he was to begin with, which was plenty, when you first saw him and decided, ‘he’s too nervous for this job.’ ”
“Oh, no,” Farrier said to her, “I’m not goin’ down that road. The only reason Darren Stoat’s uncomfortable around me is he knows I was a candidate for that job myself, and far more qualified. And he also knows I know the only reason that he got it, and I didn’t, was because one of the SOG brass hats he’d been playin’ footsie with for ten or fifteen years made him a present of it. Well, nothin’ I can do about that. If he knows I think that, he’s right. No way in the world I could ever convince him otherwise.”
“No,” Cheri said, “of course you can’t. I wouldn’t want you, even try. You could never bring it off. But what you
can
do and you
should
do, because he’ll be so grateful for it, is make it as easy as you can for him to deal with these hoodlums.
Then
, when he
gets
the big promotion, he’ll thank you for your help and do something nice for you.”
“He could do that,” Farrier said. “He could also resent me for seeing he was weak, and think my carrying him was a way of showing contempt. Not that he’d admit it—he’d just bury me, and then if someone asked him why, give some other reason. But I’d be buried just the same. No, he’ll always have power over me; what I need is something that’ll make him afraid to use it, except to do me good. I need something
on
the guy.”
“Well, at least give nice a try,” Cheri said. “Why you think I never did my imitation of his wife—high-hat phony bitch, can’t
stand
her—when we’re at someone’s house who also knows her? That ever occur to you? Well, if it didn’t, now you know why. Don’t need to
always
be a wise guy—now and then it pays to give someone a break.”
“Y
OU
KNOW
, D
ARREN
,” F
ARRIER
SAID
, heading for his usual before-dinner place on the black leather couch, “if the liberal crazies ever get control of Congress and abolish the FBI, I dunno what guys like
me
’d do, make a living for myself, but
you
would have it made. Way that you can cook Italian, all you’d ever
have to do’s get yourself an SBA loan, open yourself up a restaurant—in no time you’d be a rich man.”
“All my years a bachelor,” Stoat said, closing the door behind Farrier. He was clearly distracted. “Either you learn to cook or you starve. Get you a beer?”
“Yeah,” Farrier said, sitting down. “Beer’d be fine.” Then he got up again at once and with no apparent purpose wandered after Stoat, but heading for the dining room instead of following into the kitchen. For his destinaton Farrier idly chose the Hitachi TV on the pass-through counter with the video image of Margie Reedy reading New England Cable News.
“… Jamaica Pond in Boston early today, two men in their forties, one of them a former well-known college basketball star, were gunned down in what police say appeared to be still another brutal drug-related shooting.”
A view of the walk at the northerly end of the pond replaced Reedy’s face on the screen. Fluttering yellow plastic tape black-lettered “P
OLICE
L
INE
—D
O
N
OT
C
ROSS
” placed about three feet off the ground linked the clump of trees where McKeach had hidden in ambush to the cement bench upright of the bench beside the place on the sidewalk where Walters and his bodyguard had gone down.