Authors: George V. Higgins
“Wouldn’t recognize myself,” Naughton said, trying to smile and not managing very well.
“You get used to it,” Dowd said, sliding into the other bench in the booth. “Only time I’m in full pack now’s when I have to go into a building where they’ve got someone freshly dead who was real important. Usually don’t mind it—disliked him enough alive, verifying that he’s dead makes it all worthwhile.
“Eileen, since at least in theory I’m on a day off from a case driving me nuts, I do believe I’ll have a Guinness. You’re not on the clock ’til eight, right, Emmett? Interest you in one?”
“Oh, might as well,” Naughton said, pushing his iced tea aside. Eileen nodded, smiled and said, “Ettie’ll be right with you,” and put two menus on the table as she went away. Dowd took one for himself and slid the other one in front of Naughton. Soon a dark-haired waitress in her early forties, her good looks in her mind seriously marred by an overbite that
could have been corrected easily thirty years or so before, brought their pints of dark-brown Guinness with the café-aulait-colored heads of foam and set them on the table. “Hullo, Ettie,” Dowd said, picking his glass up at once. “How’re all belongin’ to yah?”
“Fine, thank you, James,” she said, working a smile around the teeth and making a small curtsey. “And those in your own household—well too?”
“No complaints, except with me,” Dowd said. “And those no more’n the usual, I’m very glad to say.”
She nodded. “And you,
Superintendent
Naughton,” she said, inclining her head. “I trust you’ve been keepin’ well.” Three years before, the first time he and Dowd had met for lunch after his promotion, she had as usual called him “Emmett” instead of “Lieutenant,” as he had requested several years previously, and Dowd had told her facetiously she mustn’t do that any more. “He’s no longer one of us ordinary mortals—he’s a
superintendent
now.”
Naughton feigned an expression of disapproval. “Still givin’ a convincing impression, I’m happy to say,” he said. “They haven’t caught up with me yet.”
“I’ll be back in a moment or two for your orders,” she said.
“How long has that kid been working in here?” Dowd said, after the waitress had gone away. Long ago in the aftermath of a state police captain’s discharge in disgrace—“after twenty-one spotless years in the uniform,” the commander’s angry-grieving statement said—for being the third party in a lovers’ triangle concluded by the husband’s shotgun murder of the wife, Dowd had decided that only a woman who was absolutely perfect could ever bring him to risk both his marriage and career. Two or three years later he had joined Naughton for lunch and met Ettie Hanifin. It had taken him three or four more encounters to register that overbite and realize with great relief that she was
“not quite perfect,” so he was safe after all. He remembered that each time he saw her, silently toasting a narrow escape once again as he raised his pint and drank some of the stout through the foamy head.
“Cripes,” Naughton said, having known that Dowd was tempted since shortly after Dowd had, but never having said anything about it because Dowd never had, “ever since her First Communion, I guess. When was it Danas bought the place, The Ground Round then, wasn’t it? Not that I came in then.”
“Danas bought it, turned it around, but then two-three years ago Harry Dana got the cancer, and seeing what was coming he sold out to Marvin Scotti, well-known Boston restaurateur and realtor with no money of his own who fronts for Nick Cistaro—who’s here today, I might add.”
Naughton’s displeasure showed on his face. “Eileen told me he’s in the back. With his rat-faced little sidekick.”
“Figured,” Dowd said. “Saw his ride in the parking lot, I came in. Maroon Expedition. Who’s he meeting?”
“Eileen didn’t know,” Naughton said. “Only notable’s gone through since I sat down’s Al Bryson—runs that ‘Stars in the Summer Sky’ thing out on Route Nine there, gets all the washed-up, drugged-out rock stars to do weekend concerts by the lake. Pleasant enough, I suppose, you don’t ever wanna grow up, and the night you’ve got tickets it doesn’t rain too hard. I recall, Al was in his fifties, he went down that delinquency-of-minors charge—feeding smack to that fourteen-year-old boy-toy singer, OD’ed in Detroit after that. All slack in the belly, but here he is, mincin’ through here in the gold silk shirt and tight pants, hair standing up and dyed green; like he’s a rock star himself.”
“Some union’s getting fucked, then,” Dowd said. “Nickie’s selling out the stagehands and electricians for a mess of pottage they’re not even gonna get to see—him and McKeach’re gonna keep it for themselves.”
Naughton laughed. “Most likely,” he said. “What a son-of-a-whore that Cistaro is, huh? Long’s there’s a dollar in it, he must not give a shit what kind of trash he has to see to get it.”
“No big need to, I guess,” Dowd said. “ ’til we catch him at something, at least.”
“And how long we been trying?” Naughton said. “Eighteen, twenty years, I bet. I
know
it’s gotta be at least that. Remember the first time I took any notice of him. Came in one night, line of duty, right after the Danas reopened it. Someone heard Abie Sayer’d relocated here; this joint was gonna be his new base for his loan-sharking business, we finally slapped the padlocks on the Paddock Grille for known felons in actual control and ownership—chiefly meaning him. No sign of Abie, but no trouble spotting Cistaro. Sittin’ right up at the bar, in the middle—which by itself, up-and-coming young hood, not known for anything serious yet, having himself a beer and a sandwich after a long but-not-too-tiring day of wrongdoing? Wouldn’t’ve meant a lot to me. But the guy who was with him did—Al DeMarco, FBI.
“Never thought that much of DeMarco, even though a lot of people I knew then thought he shat vanilla ice cream—old Commissioner Ferris was in
awe
of him. Course if Frank saw it had ‘FBI’ written on it, he was liable, bless himself and genuflect. Best investment that outfit ever made was ‘selecting,’ not just giving, Saint Francis Ferris twelve weeks of brainwashing at Quantico. ‘There’s a chapel right there on the grounds. So we were able to start each day down there with Mass and communion, just like I do here at home.’
“After that he was convinced the only reason the Virgin appeared at Fatima was because she’d been blown off course the way down, bad weather over the Azores, on her way to FBI headquarters.
“But still, if DeMarco was interested in this Cistaro kid, that meant we oughta be, too, so from that moment on, I was. He did know his bird book of hoods; if Al DeMarco thought this place was a promising place to chat up young gunsels, probably meant it was. Miss Bright-eyes wasn’t here then.”
“Right,” Dowd said as the waitress came back. “Ettie,” he said, “my friend the superintendent here was just telling me how you and he’ve kept your youth while I’ve aged terribly. He won’t tell me how you’ve done it; maybe you will—where did I go wrong?”
She laughed, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe you’ve been workin’ too hard,” she said. “Myself, I’ve got so much seniority around here now I scarcely have to lift a finger anymore now, ’less I want to. Only wait on friends these days, and since I don’t have that many of them, I don’t have to work very hard.”
Naughton pretended dismay. “Oh, I would doubt that,” he said. “You must be on your feet all the time.”
She dimpled and said: “Will it be the fish and chips as usual?”
Naughton pretended chagrin. “Oh, I suppose so,” he said.
“And you, James, as well?” she said, collecting the menus.
“No imagination either,” he said. “Fried shrimp. Skip the fries so I can have the onion rings. And a fresh Bass Ale when the food’s ready.”
“I’m all set,” Naughton said, tapping his iced-tea glass.
“A remarkable, strange devil, isn’t he,” Dowd said after she had left.
“Arthur McKeon,” Naughton said. Dowd nodded, hunching forward and resting his elbows on the table. Naughton nodded back. “Yes, he is that. In fact I had a woman actually tell me one night that that’s who he really is—the devil, Satan himself. And she wasn’t givin’ me the leg, either. She believed every word she was saying about him. ‘You’ll never get him. He knows what
you’re trying to do to him before you know yourselves. He can go where he wants, whenever he wants; do anything he wants to do, to anyone he wants—
and get away with it—always
. He can probably change his shape, it suits him, just be some
one
else, some
where
else, if he likes. You guys’re all wasting your time, trying to catch him and put him in jail. Playin’ games—big little boys.’ She said that to me, and she was perfectly sane.”
D
OWD
LAUGHED
INCREDULOUSLY
. “What in God’s name’d he
do
to her?” Dowd said.
“Or someone dear to her,” Naughton said. “I really don’t know—maybe nothing. Doesn’t matter—from McKeach’s point of view the end result’s the same. A lot of people believe he
incarnates
evil. And if enough people think like she does, believe what she said to me, she may very well be right: We’ll never get him.
“We should be able to do it ourselves, no grand jury, nothing. Just go into court and say, ‘All right, Your Honor, Commonwealth vee McKeach et al.: here’s the deal. Arthur F. McKeon, alias “McKeach,” alias “Uncle Mack,” is a menace to the good order of society. He commits all
sorts
of crimes. Here’s a partial list of all the wicked deeds we know he’s done as of the close of business last June thirtieth; we think that’s the end of his fiscal year. We’ll begin with his early career.
“ ‘We know around forty years ago he started extorting money from people; beating up people and killing people. He fixed horse races, prizefights, probably college basketball games, and at least one election each for seats on the Boston City Council and the Governor’s Council. He stole union funds, diverting
members’ dues and embezzling their pension money. He corrupted public officials—tax assessors, cops on the beat, building inspectors, municipal liquor-licensing board inspectors, two state members of the Alcoholic Beverage Control, and a member of the state racing commission. Once he bribed a fire marshal setting occupancy limits for a dance hall. This was all back in the days when he was working for Brian Gallagher, otherwise known as Brian G., and more favorably, too, by most people—they knew Brian G. was tough, but they believed he had a heart.
“ ‘And we’re just getting warmed up here. We know as soon as McKeach figured he’d learned all Brian could teach him, plus a thing or two that Brian G.’d had no idea he was putting in his head, sometime in nineteen sixty-six McKeach, having become Brian G.’s first deputy, decided that all by himself
he
could make people do the things that he was now ordering them to do by transmitting orders from Brian. He realized what mattered when you ordered people around was their perception you had the power to hurt them if they didn’t.
“ ‘As it’d been, they’d seen him as having that power because Brian’d delegated it to him. But McKeach saw their perception
was
the power. This was before he started really reading books—mostly on electronic surveillance, I think, judging by his success in defeating it—but as a lot of people’ve since learned to their sorrow, Arthur may’ve lacked formal schooling but his intuitive intelligence was topnotch. He didn’t read Lord Acton’s book, but he found out just the same that power abhors a vacuum, and he figured out if he created one in the space that Brian occupied, the power would then probably pull
him
in to exercise it—for
himself
. All he had to do was make Brian go into a very deep sleep some night, and immediately take control; then
he
would
have
the power.
“ ‘I doubt Brian G.’d taught or intended to teach Arthur that. Most likely he didn’t realize McKeach’d learned it until the instant
when he got out of the back seat of his seven-passenger black Caddy Fleetwood in the parking lot behind the old Boston Arena and saw his best pal McKeach coming out of the shadows, firing. There’s gratitude for ya, huh?
“ ‘We’re inclined to believe what he was firing was probably his favorite weapon, thirty-caliber M-two selective-fire military carbine fitted with a thirty-round, staggered-row box magazine, modified to about eighteen inches in length by sawing off the stock. We think this because we found nineteen spent shell casings in the immediate area. Medical examiner determined that a total of eleven out of thirty rounds hit Brian G. in his head and thorax. The wounds were instantly fatal. Doctors in the emergency room at BCH dug three rounds out of Brian’s driver and the lab techs found four bullets embedded in various parts of the limo. We dunno where the other slug went, but if he could put nineteen pretty much where he wanted them, firing a light-weight and very nervous weapon at full automatic, you’d have to say that McKeach probably deserves his reputation as a marksman.
“ ‘Brian’s driver recovered nicely, but to the surprise of absolutely no one had no idea who could’ve shot him—and couldn’t help us at all to find out who drilled Brian. After the chauffeur got better, McKeach showed his compassionate side by making him the manager of a Brighton liquor store his late employer’d controlled.
“ ‘Further—we know that shortly afterwards, McKeach teamed up with Nicholas Cistaro, a.k.a. the Frogman, and they conspired with each other and with divers other persons whose names are unfortunately unknown, to do and commit sundry illegal acts, including bankrolling major shipments of illegal drugs and providing safe warehouses for the storage thereof, and—–’
“And so on,” Naughton said, “far into the night. The problem
is we
can’t
do it that way, frustrating though it is. We have to go through the grand jury and we have to have witnesses who helped McKeach do bad things, but’ve now had a change of heart. Usually people undergo such changes because they’re very proud of the tans they cultivate at the beach every year, and believe us when we tell them if they don’t talk they’re never gonna see the sun shine again. They become upset, and want to tell us about what they did with such people as McKeach, and what they saw them do to others.