Killer (7 page)

“What? No, I haven’t been following you. When I heard on the news about you living in Waltham, I drove down here this morning hoping to spot you, but no, I haven’t been following you. Just serendipity, that’s all.”

“You didn’t call me on my cell phone this morning?”

He looked confused. “Call you on your cell phone? What are you talking about? How would I’ve gotten your number?” He edged closer, said, “But I do want to write a book with you. The two of us can make a lot of money doing this, Mr March. Maybe a hundred grand each for the advance, a lot more if the book does well.”

I sat quietly appraising him. He was serious, but he was also talking out of his ass. He didn’t have a book deal. Even if he did, though, I wouldn’t have had any interest. Even if I could’ve kept the money instead of paying it all out after the wrongful death suits went to court, I wouldn’t have had any interest.

“I have some advice for you,” I said.

“What?”

“Next time you want to talk business with someone, ask if you can sit at their table. Don’t just force your way in like an asshole.”

At first his expression was blank. Once he comprehended what I said, hurt showed on his mouth. He pushed himself a few inches from the table.

“I’m sorry if I was rude, but I’ve been talking to publishers, and the money I’m telling you about is real.”

“All I want is for you to get up from my table and walk away.”

It was like all the air had been let out of a tire the way he seemed to deflate right in front of me. He stood up, took a couple of aimless steps away from me, then fished a business card out of his pocket and spun on his heels like a drunk man so he could drop the card on the table in front of me.

“When you change your mind, call me,” he said. “There’s too much money in this for you not to change your mind.”

He stood silently staring at me, a shrewdness slowly taking over his expression. “I’ve read enough about you to know what your financial situation is,” he continued. “And besides, this would give you a chance to get your story out in your own words instead of how the media is portraying you.”

I pocketed his card for no other reason than to get him to leave. He was wrong. As far as the media went, I’d been getting off easy. The last thing I wanted was for people to be able to read what really happened. The bare sketches that the newspapers provided were bad enough, but not nearly as ugly as what the real truth was. I had no excuses and no reasonable explanations for the things I did.

He smiled when he saw me put his card away. He took several steps away before turning back to face me again, this time warning me not to try to cut him out. “Everyone thinks they can write a book these days,” he told me, accusingly. “It’s bullshit, which is why the market is flooded with so much crap.”

With that he finally left. I twisted my body around enough so I could watch him walk out the door. When I turned back around, I noticed Lucinda standing a few tables away holding a coffee pot, her eyes fixed on me.

“What was that all about?” she asked me.

Her complexion before had been on the pale side, now it looked almost bone-white in contrast to all of her goth shading. I wondered briefly how much of the conversation she had heard. All I knew was that she had heard enough to freak her out a bit.

“The guy’s a nut,” I said. “I never saw him before. He just came in and sat at my table, then started rambling on about some nonsense.”

She walked over and poured me a cup of coffee, her mouth compressed tightly. It wasn’t until she moved away that she asked me about the book the guy was talking about. “Why was that?” she asked, her eyes scrunching suspiciously. “Are you someone famous or something?”

I shook my head. “You got me right the first time. These days I’m not much more than an old coot. No one worth paying attention to.”

I saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes as she walked away. While I waited for my breakfast, I drank the black coffee Lucinda had poured me and chewed on a few aspirin. My headache had gotten worse the last few minutes.

When Lucinda brought my food over she was closer to her usual acerbic self. Not a hundred percent, but closer. It didn’t help me any. I’d already lost my appetite.

chapter 11

1977

Vincent DiGrassi tells me I have a choice. “This one’s not family business,” he tells me. “So you don’t got to take it.” He pauses for a moment to take a healthy swig of Pepto-Bismol, then continues, “Lenny, it’s not gonna be the way you usually do business. It’s risky. But if you do it, there’s a ten grand bonus in it for you.”

Ten grand will help right now. Jenny’s pregnant with our second kid, and we just bought a house in Revere, and then there’s all this new furniture Jenny wants. I have DiGrassi explain it to me, and when he does I almost walk away from it. Risky isn’t even close to what this is. If it weren’t for that extra ten grand...

“What the hell,” I tell him. “A job’s a job, even one as fucked up as this one. Mr DiGrassi, you on a diet these days? It looks like you shed a few.”

He nods. “Yeah, I’m on a diet. It’s called the sonofabitch heartburn diet. Sal’s going to be grateful you doing this, Lenny. Both the money part of it and that it don’t hurt to have that prick in Southie owing us a favor. And he’s going to be owing us big for this.”

“Yeah, he will. At least if his information is on the level. I wonder how he got tipped off?”

DiGrassi shrugs. It not that important to him. I collect what I need from him and leave.

That was hours ago. Now I’m driving a stolen car to every hole-in-the-wall bar in Charlestown looking for my target. I’m dressed in a blond wig with matching fake blond mustache and beard glued on. Under the seat next to me is a 9mm automatic. Each bar I go to it’s the same thing; at this hour nothing but a few degenerate alkies scattered around. According to our client in Southie, my target, one Douglas Behrle, is supposed to be hiding out in Charlestown before meeting with the Feds at four o’clock. Supposedly Behrle wants to turn rat and I have to ice him before he has the opportunity.

I’m reaching the point where I’m about to give up. It’s past three o’clock already and who knows how good the information is. Probably old bullshit, or maybe Behrle planned to hang out in Charlestown and had a change of heart. Who the fuck knows where he is now? There’s any number of towns around here where he could be killing an afternoon sucking down beers in a dive bar.

I hang an illegal U-turn on Monument Avenue, and that’s when I spot Behrle with two other guys, all of them getting into a Datsun sports coupe. I know it’s Behrle, I have his picture on the seat next to me. Medium-height, beanpole thin, pronounced Adam’s apple, acne-scarred face. I have no clue who the guys are with him. They could be Feds, could be other Southie guys. It doesn’t matter. I slam the Buick Regal I’m driving into the side of their Datsun. While they’re still collecting themselves and trying to figure out what happened, I jump out of the car with the 9mm in hand, first popping the two guys with Behrle, then Behrle himself. It all takes no more than thirty seconds. With the way his brains are leaking out of his skull, Behrle’s gotta be dead, no question. The other two should be dead, and it would be tragic for them if they weren’t given the way I’m leaving them, but in either case it doesn’t much matter.

Without bothering to look around for witnesses, I race back to my car and drive off. The next ten minutes are going to be the trickiest. If anyone calls in my car and the police run into me I’ll be earning every penny of that ten grand bonus.

I work my way off Monument Ave., driving away from the Bunker Hill monument before circling back using side streets, then finding the alley where a car’s waiting for me. No cops, no one following me. Sinking low in my seat, I take the wig off, then use an adhesive remover to get the fake beard and mustache off. I pull off the flowered Hawaiian shirt I’m wearing and slip on a gray tee shirt. The shirt, fake beard, mustache, wig, 9mm go into a bag, and I take it with me when I move to the Ford Pinto waiting for me. I wait until I get into the Pinto before I take off my driving gloves and drop them in the bag also.

When I drive out of the alley there are no cops, nothing. I start to relax. I rub a hand across my face and feel the coarseness of the glue still stuck there. Before I get home to Jenny I’ll have to make sure I have it all off.

It’s not until I’m driving over the Tobin Bridge that I hear a radio report about the brazen massacre of three men on Monument Avenue done within the hour in broad daylight. I can hear police sirens off in the distance, but no one’s after me. I wonder again how our client in Southie knew about Behrle wanting to rat him out to the Feds. I can’t help wondering who tipped him off.

chapter 12

present

The weekend was uneventful. My headaches were bad, but that was nothing new. Saturday night the same kid was working the security desk, and like the other times we didn’t say one word to each other, but I was beginning to prefer it like that. I made it through the night listening to a classic rock station without my mind wandering too much, which was about all I could ask for.

I had Sunday off, and I ended up buying a recliner, lamp and a few other odds and ends at a garage sale. The guy I bought the stuff from had a pickup truck, and for an extra ten bucks he agreed to help me move it all to my apartment. He didn’t recognize me, and acted both friendly and deferential as if I were some grandfatherly type. He kept asking me with genuine concern if I was okay while I carried my end of the recliner. It was funny in a way since he was breathing harder and was more red-faced from the effort than I was. Anyway, all of the stuff, including the extra ten bucks that I kicked in, ended up only adding up to seventy-eight dollars. The recliner, while a good twenty years old and kind of beat-up with its fabric stained and torn in spots, was comfortable. At least I had a good set-up now for reading.

There was nothing about me in Saturday’s paper. The Sunday paper had an article about me buried in the Metro section, and this time there were no pictures. Both Saturday and Sunday I went to the same diner for breakfast that I’d been going to every morning. It turned out Lucinda didn’t work weekends, which I was disappointed about. The waitress working in her place was a stout gray-haired woman in her fifties and just as surly as Lucinda had been that first day, but at least she didn’t recognize me. Not too many people seemed to. A few did, I could tell from their rubbernecking, and from the shift in their expression – from curiosity to something more like fear, but probably no more than ten people the whole weekend, at least as far as I could tell. None of these people bothered saying anything to me. Some would just move faster to get away from me, others would slow down to get a better look, but not a single word from any of them.

Sunday afternoon I thought about going to the horse track to try to parlay my dwindling funds into something more substantial, at least that’s what I tried telling myself. The truth was I missed going to the track. It wasn’t even the gambling as much as watching the horses. They were such magnificent animals. At one point I had dreamed of owning a race horse. I’d had enough money socked away where I could’ve done it, but then I would’ve had to explain to Jenny how I came up with all that money working at a liquor store. And Lombard would not have been happy with me doing something like that. Part of the deal had been for me to keep a low profile.

In the end I skipped going to the track and went to a free movie at the library instead. Too many people would’ve recognized me if I had gone to the track, and they were people better off not recognizing me.

“You’re such a tough guy,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me this face to face.”

There was another long static-like silence where I wasn’t sure whether he had hung up. Then, “You’ll be seeing me soon enough, March,” and then a click as he ended the call.

Before that, I had been up for hours sitting in my recliner reading one of the books I had taken out of the library. I had a large stack of them piled up next to my chair. As I mentioned before, it was the best way I knew to kill those early morning hours and keep past memories at bay. It was a little past nine o’clock and the call had left me no longer in the mood to do any more reading. I got up and headed to the bathroom where I showered as much of the grime off of me as I could, then doused myself with cheap cologne. Each day the stench of prison was getting a little bit less. I could still smell it on me, but it took more of an effort now.

Lucinda was back at work Monday morning. At ten o’clock when I arrived there the place was mostly empty, and she gave me a wink on seeing me. Later, when I ordered French toast and sausage instead of my usual breakfast, she put her hands to her chest as if she were having a heart attack, then showed me a wry smile, commenting on how my brains were too scrambled to remember my “usual”. She chewed the fat with me for a few minutes, and between her sarcastic cracks, she let on that she was thinking of going back for a GED degree, maybe even college someday. When she came back with a pot of coffee, any suspicions she might’ve had after overhearing that so-called writer the other day were long gone.

I was about to leave when this biker-type walked in, and the way he stared at Lucinda put me back in my seat. He was in his twenties, a big guy wearing a black leather biker’s jacket, jeans, and biker boots. Tattoos decorated his neck and shaved skull.

Lucinda noticed him also and was trying to bravely stare him down, but I could see the worry creasing her brow. The guy walked up to her and grabbed her arm roughly. She tried to pull free but couldn’t.

“You bitch,” he said. “You gonna let me buy you drinks all night, then slip me like that? Fuck that.”

I walked over to him and told him to let go of her. He stared at me as if I were nuts.

“Gramps, this is none of your business. Beat it before you hurt your hip.” “Let go of her or I’ll break your fucking wrist.”

That just annoyed him even more. He reached out to push me away. I stepped aside and grabbed him by his fingers and twisted them back until he fell to his knees.

“You better fucking let go,” he demanded. He was helpless in the position I had him in. I increased the pressure until tears came to his eyes.

“A little more pressure and your wrist snaps,” I told him.

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“Really? With two broken wrists? ’Cause after I break this one I’m breaking the other.”

Lucinda had been watching this quietly. “Should I call the police?” she asked me.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” I addressed the guy on his knees, the one whose wrist I was nearly breaking. “How much did you spend on drinks last night?”

“Fifty bucks,” he forced out.

With my free hand I took my wallet from my pocket and handed it to Lucinda. “Count out fifty dollars and give it to this scumbag.” After she did that I told the guy he had two choices, accept the money and get the fuck out of there or have more than his wrist broken. I let go of him then.

She had me sit back down, and brought me over a piece of cherry pie and a fresh coffee. I sat for a while eating while she kept me company. When I told her I better get going, she looked worried.

“He might be out there looking for you,” she said.

“Nah, he’s a coward.” I hesitated, then asked, “Whatever possessed you to let someone like that buy you drinks?”

She smiled at that. “I ended up ditching him, didn’t I?”

I couldn’t help smiling back at her. I nodded to her as I left the diner. I looked around to see if he was out there waiting for me, but I guess he had better sense than to be waiting for a lunatic.

Later that morning I went back to the store that sold me my cell phone, but the salesman I had dealt with still wasn’t there. The only person working in the store was the same salesgirl I had tried talking to earlier, and she looked horrified when she saw me walk back into the place. I didn’t bother talking to her, and instead just turned around and left.

It was a warmish October day and the sun felt good on my face. With nothing else to do, I took a walk down some side streets and ended up stumbling upon the Charles River. I walked along it until I found a grassy spot where I could sit and watch the water. My pop used to tell me how he swam in the Charles River when he was growing up, but by the time I was a kid the river had gotten too polluted for anything like that. Not only was it a yellowish brown color but you could smell the chemicals and sewage that came off of it. Now as I sat there the water looked clean. I wondered briefly whether it actually was or if it was an illusion with the muck and filth still there but better hidden beneath the surface.

Looking out over the water, my thoughts slowly drifted to Jenny. She had to know early on that I was involved in some sort of shady business. We had too nice a home and too many other nice possessions for me to have just been working at a liquor store, and she was too smart not to know I couldn’t’ve made all that extra money betting on the horses like I used to tell her I did. I’m sure she never suspected me of being a hit man, but she knew something was up. There were those times I’d catch her giving me an odd look before she’d realize it and correct it. And then there were those times when I would need to leave town for days or longer, and those questions she’d swallow back when I would return home. It must’ve crushed her when she found out the truth, but even then she tried to hide it from me and put a brave face on. She never abandoned me, and right up until the end before cancer got her, I knew she would’ve been waiting for me if she could’ve.

It was hard thinking of her dying the way she did. I knew it had been a long, painful death for her. My mom had written me several letters letting me know what Jenny went through. Even through all of that, Jenny acted cheerfully the few times I was able to reach her by phone, trying to pretend there was nothing wrong with her.

When she finally succumbed I didn’t know about it until months afterwards. By this time my mom had already been dead for six months, and I had no contact with my kids. I guess the prison officials left responsibility for informing me about my wife to my kids, or maybe things just slipped through the cracks. Even at this late date I didn’t know where Jenny was buried, but I guess it didn’t much matter. It wasn’t her there, just some bones left from her. It wouldn’t make any difference if I visited the grave or not. Nothing could change that she was gone.

I tried hard to remember what my wife looked like, but I could only bring up a vague impression. It had been years since I’d been able to picture how Jenny looked. I had little to console myself over what happened with her other than I’d been able to tell her where my safety deposit boxes were without the federal or state officials ever having any idea about them. At least she had been able to live out her last few years in comfort before the cancer hit her, and my kids were able to go to college.

After a while I found that I had stopped thinking of Jenny, and instead my thoughts had moved on to my victims. It wasn’t so much that I was trying to make peace with what I had done as trying to understand how I could’ve done what I did. I tried to make some sense of the person I was now and who I used to be and the brutality back then that I was capable of. I thought about the biker in Lucinda’s diner whose wrist I almost broke, and wondered whether that meant anything, and decided it didn’t. But even with who I was back then, I never once laid a finger on my wife or kids. They never once looked at me with fear or dread. I tried to put that in perspective with what I used to see in my victim’s face before the last moment, but it exhausted me.

Eventually I gave up trying to make sense of it. Instead, I focused on just clearing my head and trying to think of nothing. More than anything I wanted to just lie back and enjoy the feel of the sun on my face. It didn’t work. Too many memories pushed their way through, and before too long I had to get up in my attempt to outrun them, or at least outwalk them.

I spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon walking along the Charles River trying to leave those memories far behind, one in particular which especially haunted me. It was four o’clock when I returned back to Moody Street. I ate an early dinner at a Korean barbecue place. The prices were cheap and the food tasted good, and for the most part I was too tired to pay attention to those old memories. After a couple of beers it wasn’t even an issue.

That night when I left work, I thought I again saw a black sedan following me. I had this impression that it had turned down a side street, but by the time I looked for it, it was gone, nothing but a mirage. I was bone-tired, especially after all the walking I’d done earlier, and decided my mind had to’ve been playing tricks on me – it wasn’t as if I could actually remember hearing anything, or for that matter, seeing anything once I rubbed the exhaustion out of my eyes, but still, it left me feeling unsettled.

Tuesday turned out to be uneventful. It was especially quiet that morning at the diner and Lucinda ended up sitting down at my table and reading me prose from a notebook that she kept. When she asked me what I thought, I could see the anxiousness in her eyes and tugging at her mouth. I told her the truth, that I thought it was good, and she made a few cracks, both self-deprecating and insulting, about the state of my mental faculties if I thought that crap was any good and how ridiculous it was for her to care anyway about what a senile old coot like me thought, but I could tell it was a relief to her that I liked it, and she seemed to move lighter on her feet afterwards.