House Revenge

by Mike Lawson

  “Two grand seems kind of low, considering the risk,” Ray said.

  “Hey, if you’re not interested, I don’t give a shit. I’m not going to sit here and dicker with you. You want the job or not?”

  “How do we know Soriano sent you?” Roy said. “You could be FBI, for all we know.”

  Delray made a noise that might have been a laugh. “Do I look like FBI to you? Anyway, call Soriano if you want to be sure. You have his number.”

  Ray took a cell phone from his pocket and said, “I’ll do that. What’s your name?”

  “You don’t need my name. Just describe me to Soriano”—and then Delray removed his sunglasses.

  When the McNultys saw his pure-white right eye, Ray just raised his eyebrows, but Roy said, “Jesus.” Then he added, “Uh, sorry.”

  Delray put the glasses back over his eyes.

  Ray punched a number into his phone and after a couple of rings, he said, “Mr. Soriano? It’s Ray McNulty. There’s a guy here in our bar, kind of a, a dark-skinned guy with one eye that’s sort of, uh, fucked up. Anyway, he said you sent him.”

  Ray listened as Soriano talked, Soriano basically saying the same thing as the guy with the eye had said, how this deal came up just yesterday and he needed someone with a van to go to Greenfield right away.

  “Why didn’t you just call us?” Ray said.

  “Because, unless you’re an idiot,” Soriano said, “you don’t talk about shit like this on a phone.”

  “Two seems a little low,” Ray said. He listened for another minute, then smiled. “Okay,” Ray said and disconnected the call. To Delray, he said, “Soriano said we get twenty-five hundred.”

  Delray said, “That’s between you and Soriano. He’ll pay you when he’s got the merchandise.”

  Ray started to say something but Delray cut him off. “Has Soriano ever stiffed you before?”

  “No,” Ray said.

  “All right then,” Delray said. “You just make sure those guns make it to Providence by tomorrow night. They don’t make it, if you decide to find your own buyer . . . Believe me, you don’t want me coming back here again.”

  “Hey!” Roy said, insulted that this nigger—or whatever he was—would say something like that to them. But before he could do anything, his brother pressed down on his forearm again, like yanking on a dog’s collar.

  Delray dropped a yellow Post-it sticker on the table. “That’s the name of the storage place, the unit the crate’s in, and the combination for the lock on the door.”

  Delray took one last look around the bar, shook his head, and left.

  After Delray had passed through the door, Roy said to his brother, “We should have kicked his ass, talking to us like that.”

  “Yeah, we should have,” Ray said. But Roy could tell that he didn’t mean it. “The good news is we can use the money. Sean may be picking up the cost of the remodel but a little extra cash would be good, especially now that he isn’t paying us to get that old lady out of that building.”

  “I wonder how she’s doing,” Roy said.

  “Who gives a shit? She was a pain in the ass. Hey, Doreen, how ’bout bringing us a couple of beers?”

  “Get your own damn beer,” Doreen said.

  “I just hope Greg doesn’t make it back here anytime soon,” Roy said.

  “How’s he gonna get back?” Ray said. “By now, he already drank the money we gave him.”

  The McNultys had given Greg Canyon, the bum who helped them with Elinore Dobbs, a hundred bucks, and two hours after Elinore was injured Roy put him on a bus with a one-way ticket to New York. They told him not to come back to Boston for a month, but they figured they might never see him again. Since Canyon spent every dime he panhandled on booze, he might not ever earn enough to afford a ticket back. The only problem was that Canyon had been raised in Boston and he didn’t know anyplace else so it was possible he might make the effort to return. But then, so what if he did? The McNultys knew the cops were trying to find Canyon because cops had stopped by places near their bar that sold cheap booze looking for him, but it wasn’t like he was number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

  For an alkie, Canyon was actually a fairly bright guy. He’d even gone to college before he became a full-time drunk and lost everything he owned. The McNultys had used him a few times when he came around the bar looking for a handout and they had some shitty job that ­Doreen was too lazy to do, like cleaning the restrooms the time the sewer backed up.

  But Canyon refused to rig the wire across the top of the landing, saying he’d help but he wasn’t going to kill anyone. So the McNultys installed the small eyebolts and the trip wire the night before, knowing Elinore Dobbs always got up early and would be the first person down the stairs in the morning. They’d lied to DeMarco and the Boston detective about being in the bar that night, knowing Doreen would back them up. Canyon’s job had been to be inside the building, down on the second floor, and when he heard Elinore fall, to figure out a way to get rid of the wire and the eyebolts; they even gave him a pair of pliers so he could snip the wire quickly. And that’s what Canyon did: snipped the wire, removed the eyebolts, and put in a new bulb while Elinore was unconscious and before the medics got there.

  Roy walked behind the bar—giving that lazy bitch Doreen a dirty look—and poured two Budweisers using the tap. When he returned to the table, his brother was back to looking at the catalog.

  “You know,” Ray said, “I think I like these black stools better than the red ones. They look, I don’t know, classier or something.”

  DeMarco dropped Delray off at Logan after his meeting with the ­McNultys, then used a pay phone to call the Boston office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He told whoever answered the phone that he had information regarding a crate of machine guns about to be delivered to a gangster in Providence. The woman who took the call sounded bored—liked he was calling to report someone who hadn’t paid his parking tickets—but she transferred him to a guy who had gravel in his voice box.

  “Sometime tomorrow,” DeMarco said, “two men driving a white Ford Econoline van, license number 534-PSV, are going to pick up a crate of machine guns from a rental storage place called Casey’s in Greenfield, Massachusetts. After they get the guns, they’re taking them to a mob guy in Providence.”

  “What’s your name?” the ATF agent said.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” DeMarco said.

  “So what’s the name of the guy in Providence?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that either.”

  “Okay, but can you tell me what kind of guns we’re talking about here?”

  “I don’t know exactly. M16s, AR-15s, AK-47s, something like that, all illegally modified to fire on full automatic.”

  “Well, those aren’t exactly machine guns. I thought you meant like M60s or something.”

  Jesus, what was with these people? “Whatever,” DeMarco said. “I’m not talking about fucking BB guns. So are you interested or not?”

  “Yeah, we’re interested if you’re telling the truth. How do you know about these guns and the people picking them up?”

  “I just do. So if you have any desire to make sure a dozen assault rifles don’t end up in the hands of gangsters, you might want to arrest these guys tomorrow.”

  “How do I know we won’t send a dozen guys to Greenfield tomorrow, and they’ll just sit on their ass all day? For that matter, how do I know this isn’t some kind of trap to get agents in a spot where they can be ambushed?”

  DeMarco closed his eyes and put his head against the glass of the phone booth. How hard could this possibly be? “Look,” he said. “You do what you want. But tomorrow, if you don’t arrest these guys, I’m going to call the Globe and tell them you had a tip to get automatic weapons off the street and you chose not to act on the tip. And in case y
ou think the Globe won’t believe me, I’ve recorded this conversation.”

  He hadn’t recorded anything, but what did gravel-voice know?

  Thinking he was now being recorded, the ATF agent became more formal. “Well, sir,” he said, “thank you for reporting this situation to the ATF. I’ll advise my supervisor immediately.”

  “Thank you,” DeMarco said.

  17

  The McNultys woke up early the following morning—early for them meaning about nine a.m.—wanting to get a jump on the day since they had about five hours of driving to do. They stopped at a McDonald’s and bought Egg McMuffins, hash browns, and coffee, but instead of heading immediately toward Greenfield, they drove out of their way to go by their bar in Revere. They didn’t go inside, but stopped across the street and admired the new sign over the door.

  “Goddamn, that’s just beautiful,” Ray said.

  “Man, you are right about that,” Roy said.

  On the way to Greenfield, Ray said, “Maybe we oughta be thinkin’ bigger when it comes to the bar.”

  “What do you mean?” Roy said.

  “I mean, getting the new sign and new furniture will make it look better, but we need to do something to attract more customers. Maybe we oughta have a wet T-shirt contest once a week, or maybe . . .”

  “Where would we get the girls?”

  “Or maybe happy hour, like on Fridays, sell beer for a buck a glass.”

  “We’d lose our shirts.”

  “Yeah, at first, but we’d grow the crowd. We need to get young guys into the bar, guys with jobs, guys who’ll bring their girlfriends, instead of a bunch of old farts collecting Social Security. And we need young chicks for customers, chicks that’ll attract guys. We could have like ­Ladies Night every Wednesday, any girl under thirty who isn’t a complete dog gets drinks for half price.

  “But what we really need,” Ray said, unable to contain his excitement, “is to get someone besides Doreen behind the bar. We need a young broad with big tits. Goddamn Doreen, she’s not exactly the friendliest woman on the planet, and the way she looks . . .”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Roy said. “But if we hired a young gal, we’d have to pay her more than we’re paying Doreen, and if we fire Doreen, who’d manage the bar?”

  “Goddamnit! How come you come up with an argument for every idea I have? I’m just sayin’ what’s the point of fixing up the bar if we don’t do something to increase business?”

  They reached the storage place in Greenfield about noon; the guns were supposed to be in unit number sixteen. They found the unit, which had one of those roll-up metal garage doors, and could see the lock on the door. Ray pulled out the Post-it note with the combination for the lock, although the combination was easy to remember: 38R-24L-36R—like the figure he wished Doreen had.

  The only thing inside the storage unit—which was hotter than an oven—was a single wooden crate with rope handles on each end. Roy went to one end of the crate, Ray to the other. “Use your legs, not your back,” Roy said.

  They picked up the crate and slid it into the back of the van.

  “What do we do about the lock?” Roy said.

  “Shit, I don’t know,” Ray said. “I guess we might as well take it with us. It’s a good lock.”

  “Okey-dokey,” Roy said.

  Three miles from the storage unit, they stopped for a red light—and four huge black Suburban SUVs came out of nowhere, blocked them in on all sides, and about a dozen guys came out of the SUVs, all wearing body armor and helmets with visors, pointing M16s at them.

  “Aw, fuck me,” Ray said.

  The arrest was reported in the Globe the following morning. It wasn’t a big enough deal to warrant a press conference, but the ATF made sure they got the credit for taking ten assault rifles and two violent criminals off the street.

  DeMarco called Mahoney first to let him know that the McNultys had been arrested. Mahoney’s response was: “Good. But what about Callahan?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t figured out what to do about him yet.”

  “Well, figure it out,” Mahoney said.

  And DeMarco thought: Would it have killed you, just once, to say, Great job, Joe.

  His next call was to Delray. “It’s done. Thanks for your help and thank Al for me.”

  “They shouldn’t have hurt that old lady,” Delray said.

  “Are you worried they might identify you or name Soriano? You told me you didn’t give them your name but you’re, uh, kind of distinctive-looking.”

  Delray made a sound that might have been a laugh. “No matter how much time they have to serve, those guys aren’t going to say anything about Soriano or me. They know Soriano works for Gervasi and they know Gervasi can get to them in any prison in the country. And they think I work for Soriano. And even if they were dumb enough to say I told them to pick up the guns and deliver them to Soriano, I’d just deny it and so would Soriano. They’re the ones who were arrested with the guns in their van, and they can’t prove anyone else was involved.”

  At eleven a.m., not long after speaking with Delray, DeMarco attended the McNultys’ arraignment. He made sure he got there early enough to get a seat right behind the defense table. When the McNultys were led out to stand next to a public defender they’d probably met fifteen minutes before the arraignment, they both saw DeMarco—and DeMarco smiled at them. Roy lost it. “You motherfucker,” he screamed and started toward DeMarco, but a big bailiff grabbed his collar, jerked him backward, and told him to shut up and go stand next to his lawyer.

  Naturally, they pled not guilty in spite of the evidence against them. Their lawyer requested bail, having the balls to say that although the McNultys’ criminal records might indicate otherwise, they were respected local businessmen with deep ties to the community. Plus, neither brother had, or had ever had, a passport. The judge took about two seconds to set their bail at two hundred grand—a hundred per brother—and said they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the state of Massachusetts without the permission of the court, and set a trial date for six months away.

  It hadn’t occurred to DeMarco that they’d be given bail. It should have occurred to him—he was a lawyer, after all—and he knew that with almost any crime less severe than murder even the most obviously guilty are allowed to roam the streets until their trial. But shit.

  Six hours after their arraignment, Roy and Ray were back in McNulty’s drinking. To scrape up the money they’d needed to pay the bondsman’s fee, they had to give the bastard their second car, the red Camaro, which they were sure was worth at least ten grand. They also had to put up their bar for collateral; if they skipped before their trial, McNulty’s would become the property of the bondsman, a Polack named Sandusky. They planned to get roaring drunk that night and, in the mood they were in, God help any dumb shit who pissed them off.

  When they told Doreen to bring them a bottle of Jameson’s—and not a bottle they’d watered down—she didn’t tell them to get their own fuckin’ bottle if they wanted one. The McNultys took a lot of lip off Doreen, but she knew this wasn’t the time for lip. She also knew that this wasn’t the time to ask what was going to happen to her if they went to jail.

  The McNultys had spent the previous night in a cell pondering their fate and wondering how it was that they’d been arrested. They’d originally concluded that most likely the feds—FBI or ATF—had been monitoring Gervasi’s or Soriano’s phone calls, those guys being major hoods. But since they didn’t say anything on the phone about picking up a crate of guns, the feds must have started following them after they talked to Soriano. Or maybe the feds had been following the guns, just waiting for someone to pick them up. Whatever the case, they were screwed.

  They didn’t see any way they wouldn’t go to jail. Their defense was going to be that they’d been hired to pick up a box in Greenfield—­hauling shit was the k
ind of thing they did to supplement their income, like hauling shit occasionally for Sean Callahan—and they had no idea what was in the box. Yeah right, a jury would say. But when they were asked who told them to pick up the box, well, that was going to be a problem.

  They agreed it would not only be futile, but possibly suicidal, to point the finger at Soriano and that scary motherfucker with the white eye. For one thing, if they said that Soriano had hired them to pick up the weapons, Soriano would just deny it. When Ray had called Soriano to make sure the one-eyed guy really worked for him, he’d never even mentioned guns on the phone. Plus, Soriano hadn’t even given them any money in advance. So the likelihood of them getting a reduced sentence by testifying against Soriano was almost zero since the cops wouldn’t be able to build a case against Soriano using their testimony. But more importantly, they both knew—with absolute certainty—that if Soriano found out they were planning to testify against him, he’d have them whacked.

  But when they saw DeMarco in the courtroom, they realized immediately that he was the guy who’d set them up. As soon as he smiled at them, they had no doubt. Somehow, some way, that slick son of a bitch had cut a deal with Soriano and he did it because of what they did to that old biddy. The bottom line, however, was still the same: they were going to jail.

  When they’d asked their useless public defender how much time they could get for being caught with ten machine guns, he’d hemmed and hawed, and said it depended on this or that, but it was likely to be eight to ten years because of their records. Politicians didn’t have the guts to change the gun control laws as that might keep them from getting reelected, so what they did instead was make sure that whenever some criminal committed a gun-related crime the sentencing judge came down on the criminal like a ton of bricks.