The Friends of Eddie Coyle

by George V. Higgins

  “I can sell fifty tomorrow without ever seeing you,” Jackie Brown said. “I can’t get my hands on them fast enough. I can sell every gun I can get. I bet if I was to go down to the Shrine there and go to confession I’d get three Hail Marys and the priest’d ask me confidentially if I could get him something light he could carry under his coat. People’re desperate for guns. I had a guy last week that was hot for a Python and I got him this big fucking Blackhawk, six-incher, forty-one mag, and he took it like he’d been looking for it all his life. Should’ve seen that bastard going out, big lump under his coat, looked like he was stealing melons. I had a guy seriously ask me, could I get him a few machine guns. He’d go a buck and a half apiece for as many as I could get, didn’t even care what caliber.”

  “What color was he?” the stocky man asked.

  “He was a nice fellow,” Jackie Brown said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I was to be able to get something for him in a week or so. Good material, too. M-sixteens in very nice shape.”

  “I never been able to understand a man that wanted to use a machine gun,” the stocky man said. “It’s life if you get hooked with it and you can’t really do much of anything with it except fight a war, maybe. You can’t hide it and you can’t carry it around in a car and you can’t hit anything with the goddamned thing unless you don’t mind shooting out a couple of walls getting the guy. Which is risky. I don’t care much for a machine gun. The best all-around item I ever saw is the four-inch Smith. Now that is a fine piece of machinery, you can heft it and it goes where you point it.”

  “It’s too big for a lot of people,” Jackie Brown said. “I had a man that wanted a couple of thirty-eights a week or so ago, and I come up with one of those and a Colt two-incher. He liked the Colt all right but he was all edgy about the Smith. Asked me if I thought he was going to go around wearing a fucking holster or something. But he took it just the same.”

  “Look,” the stocky man said, “I want thirty guns. I’ll take four-inchers and two-inchers. Thirty-eights, I’ll take a three-fifty-seven mag if I have to. Thirty pieces. I’ll give you twelve hundred.”

  “Balls,” Jackie Brown said. “I got to have at least seventy apiece.”

  “I’ll go fifteen hundred,” the stocky man said.

  “Split the difference,” Jackie Brown said. “Eighteen hundred.”

  “I’ll have to see the stuff,” the stocky man said.

  “Sure,” Jackie Brown said. His expression changed: he smiled.

  2

  The strawberry ice cream soda and the dark green Charger R/T arrived in the stocky man’s vision almost simultaneously. The waitress went away and he watched the car travel slowly past the stores and stop at the far end of the parking lot. He unwrapped the plastic straw and began without haste to drink the soda. The driver of the car remained inside.

  The stocky man paid for his soda and said to the waitress: “I was wondering if there was a men’s room here.” She gestured toward the back of the store. The stocky man walked into the narrow corridor at the rear, past the rest rooms. Beyond him there was a screen door ajar on a loading platform. He went out on the loading platform and crouched. He jumped clumsily off the platform onto the service road. Two hundred yards away there was another loading platform. When he reached it, he clambered up and entered through a metal door marked PRODUCE ONLY. Inside there was a young man sorting lettuce. The stocky man offered an explanation: “My car broke down out on the street there. Is there a phone in here I can use?” The young man said something about a phone near the registers in front. The stocky man left the store by the front door. He took a general view of the parking lot. When his vision settled on the Charger he began to walk toward it.

  The driver unlocked the passenger door of the Charger and the stocky man got in. The stocky man said: “Been waiting long?”

  The driver was about thirty-five. He was wearing suede boots, flared tweed slacks, a gold turtleneck sweater and a glossy black leather car coat. He had long hair and wore broad sunglasses with heavy silver frames. “As long as it took you to decide it was safe to come out,” he said. “What the hell made you choose this place? You getting your hair done or something?”

  “I heard they were having a special on skis,” the stocky man said. “This is a pretty nice car you got here. Anybody I know?”

  “I don’t think so,” the driver said. “Fellow out in the western part of the state was using it to transport moon. Poor bastard. Paid cash for it and got hooked on his first trip. I don’t see how the hell they can afford to sell the stuff when they got to buy a new car every time they take a load out.”

  “Sometimes they get away with it,” the stocky man said.

  “I didn’t know that was in your line,” the driver said.

  “Well, it isn’t,” the stocky man said, “but you hear things from time to time, you know. People’re careless.”

  “I know,” the driver said. “Like last week I heard you were coming up for disposition in New Hampshire the fifteenth of January, and I said to myself, I wonder where Eddie’s got plans to spend the Fourth of July.”

  “That’s why I was interested in the skis,” the stocky man said. “I figure as long as I got to go up there I might as well make a weekend out of it, you know? Think we’ll have snow by then?”

  “I think we’re getting some right now,” the driver said.

  “Because I was thinking, if we did,” the stocky man said, “maybe you could join me for the weekend. You’d make out like a bandit, those clothes, the car.”

  “Then on Tuesday we could drive down to court together,” the driver said.

  “That’s right,” the stocky man said. “Make a nice outing. Give you a chance to say hello to all your old friends up there. What the hell’re you chasing now, queers?”

  “They got me on drugs,” the driver said. “So far all I got is pot, but they tell me there’s some hash floating around in the real swinging places, and they borrowed me to look for it.”

  The stocky man said: “But you’re still interested in machine guns, I suppose.”

  “Yes indeed,” the driver said. “I always had a strong interest in a machine gun or two.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” the stocky man said. “I said to myself, Old Dave is reliable. I wonder what he’s doing now, if he remembers his old friends and the machine guns. That’s why I looked you up.”

  “Just what old friends, for example?” the driver said.

  “Well, I was thinking, for example,” the stocky man said, “maybe the U.S. Attorney up there. He’s an old friend of yours, as I recall.”

  “You thought I might enjoy a chance to talk with him,” the driver said.

  “I figured it was worth asking,” the stocky man said.

  “That’s an awful long way to go to see somebody I can talk to on the phone,” the driver said. “Still, if I had a strong reason.”

  “Well,” the stocky man said, “I got three kids and a wife at home, and I can’t afford to do no more time, you know? The kids’re growing up and they go to school and the other kids make fun of them and all. Hell, I’m almost forty-five years old.”

  “That’s your strong reason,” the driver said. “I need one for me. What’re they holding over you, about five years?”

  “My lawyer guesses about two or so,” the stocky man said.

  “You’ll do well to get out with two,” the driver said. “You had about two hundred cases of C.C. on that truck, way I remember it, and none of it belonged to you. Belonged to a fellow up in Burlington, I think it was, and you made a mistake like that before.”

  “I keep telling you,” the stocky man said, “it was all a mistake. I was minding my own business and getting along the best I could and this fellow called me up, knew I was out of work, and he asks me, would I drive a truck for him? That’s all there was to it. I didn’t know that guy from Burlington from Adam.”

  “I can see how that could happen,” the driver said. “Man like y
ou lives in Wrentham, Massachusetts, must get a lot of calls to drive a semi from Burlington to Portland, especially when I never heard of you making a living driving a truck before. I can see how that could happen. I’m surprised the jury didn’t believe you.”

  “My stupid lawyer,” the stocky man said. “He’s not as smart as you. Wouldn’t let me take the stand and tell them how it happened. They never heard the whole story.”

  “Why don’t you appeal on that?” the driver said.

  “I thought about it,” the stocky man said. “Incompetence of counsel. I knew a fellow got out on that one. Trouble is, I haven’t got time to write up the papers. I know where there’s a guy that does it, but he’s down in Danbury I think, and I don’t want to see him particularly. Anyway, I was wondering if maybe there wasn’t an easier way of handling it.”

  “Like me saying hello to somebody,” the driver said.

  “Actually, something a little stronger than that,” the stocky man said. “I was thinking more in terms of you having the prosecutor tell the judge how I been helping my uncle like a bastard.”

  “Well, I would,” the driver said. “But then again, you haven’t been. We’re old buddies and all, Eddie, but I got to take Scout’s Honor when I do that. And what am I going to tell them about you? That you were instrumental in recovering two hundred cases of Canadian Club? I don’t think that’s going to help you much.”

  “I called you a few times,” the stocky man said.

  “You gave me some real stuff, too,” the driver said. “You tell me about a guy that’s going to get hit and fifteen minutes later he gets hit. You tell me about some fellows that’re planning a bank job, but you don’t get around to telling me until they’re coming out the door with the money and everybody in the world knows about it. That’s not working for uncle, Eddie. You got to put your whole soul into it. Hell, I been hearing it around that maybe you’re not even really going straight. I keep hearing you’re maybe mixed up in something else that’s going on.”

  “Like what?” the stocky man said.

  “Oh, well,” the driver said, “you know how it is with what you hear. I wouldn’t confront a man with something I heard. You know me better’n that.”

  “Well,” the stocky man said, “suppose we were to talk about some machine guns.”

  “Just to change the subject,” the driver said.

  “Yeah,” the stocky man said. “Suppose you had a reliable informer that put you onto a colored gentleman that was buying some machine guns. Army machine guns, M-sixteens. Would you want a fellow like that, that was helping you like that, would you want him to go to jail and embarrass his kids and all?”

  “Let me put it this way,” the agent said, “if I was to get my hands on the machine guns and the colored gentleman and the fellow that was selling the machine guns, and if that happened because somebody put me in the right place at the right time with maybe a warrant, I wouldn’t mind saying to somebody else that the fellow who put me there was helping uncle. Does the colored gentleman have any friends?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” the stocky man said. “Thing is, I just found out about it yesterday.”

  “How’d you find out?” the driver said.

  “Well, one thing and another,” the stocky man said. “You know how it is, you’re talking to somebody and he says something and the next fellow says something, and the first thing you know, you heard something.”

  “When’s it supposed to come off?” the driver said.

  “I’m not sure yet,” the stocky man said. “See, I’m right on the button with this one, I come to you soon as I heard it. I got more things to find out, if you’re—if you think you might be interested. I think a week or so. Why don’t I call you?”

  “Okay,” the driver said. “Do you need anything else?”

  “I need a good leaving alone,” the stocky man said. “I’d as soon not have anybody start thinking about me too much on this detail. I don’t want nobody following me around, all right?”

  “Okay,” the driver said, “well do it your way. You call me when you get something, if you do, and if I get something, I’ll put it in front of the U.S. Attorney. If I don’t, all bets’re off. Understood?”

  The stocky man nodded.

  “Merry Christmas,” the driver said.

  3

  Three heavyset men wearing nylon windbreakers and plaid woolen shirts, each of them holding a can of Schaefer beer, marched past the stocky man under Gate A as the first quarter ended. One of the men said: “I don’t know why the fuck I come down here every week, I don’t know the fuck why I do. Look at those stupid bastards, fifteen minutes, down seventeen points, Buffalo’s running right through them. It was nine points on the card and I took the Pats because I figure they’ll at least stay that close. Goddamned game.”

  Several minutes later a man with a florid complexion, his face scarred from acne, came up to the stocky man. “You take your own fucking time showing up, don’t you?” the stocky man said.

  “Look,” the second man said. “I get up this morning and take the kids to church and the little bastards screamed so bad I had to take them out. Then the old lady starts the music about how I never stay home, and I won’t finish painting the house and the car’s all goddamned dirty and everything else. I couldn’t find a place to park when I got here. So why don’t you shut your god-damned mouth, I had enough people yakking at me today.”

  “It’s a shitty game anyway,” the stocky man said.

  “I know,” the second man said, “I heard it on the radio coming in. It was ten to nothing when I left the car.”

  “It’s seventeen now,” the stocky man said. “They still haven’t scored. I was talking to Dillon the other day at his place and I was saying to him, has somebody got something in with them. And he says no, what the hell is there to fix? They don’t have a good enough defense to hold the other side down, and they don’t have any offense to run their own up, so what the hell is there to do?”

  “I heard something about Dillon that I didn’t like,” the second man said.

  “I know it,” the stocky man said. “I heard that too.”

  “See, he was with Arthur and the Polack that night, and I hear something about a grand jury. Which I don’t like a bit.”

  “Well,” the stocky man said, “you got nothing to worry about. You didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Never mind what I had to do with it,” the second man said. “I don’t like to see them getting close to Arthur. Next time he goes it’ll be two-thirds mandatory, at least, and Arthur does hard time. He gets to thinking too much. When he was in Billerica the last time there, a couple of us had to go up and see him and cheer him up once, twice. One of the screws saw him getting chummy with the chaplain up there, which is usually the tip-off with Arthur. He damned near got in trouble when Lewis got grabbed with those stocks that time, but they couldn’t be sure he did it.”

  “Arthur’s a good man,” the stocky man said.

  “Arthur’s as tight as a popcorn fart when he’s on a job,” the second man said, “but you sit him away some place where he’s got too much time to think and he’s dangerous. He’d fuck a dog with scarlet fever to get parole.”

  “Well, you know him better’n I do,” the stocky man said. “I always liked him.”

  “You can’t beat him on a job,” the second man said. “No question about that. I wouldn’t go for this thing if Arthur wasn’t on it. You get in somewhere and somebody starts getting nervous, some woman teller or something, and everybody’s all lathered up anyway, you got to have Arthur along. I never heard a shot fired when Arthur’s in there. He tells somebody he’ll shoot them if they don’t do what he says, they always do it. They believe Arthur. He looks like he means what he says, so you don’t have to do anything. It’s afterwards that you got to worry about Arthur, and you don’t have to then unless he gets in the slam for something. It’s a risk you got to take.”

  “I think I got
the guns you want,” the stocky man said.

  “They look pretty good, do they?” the second man said.

  “Well, they oughta,” the stocky man said. “I hadda go seventy apiece for them. Yeah, they look good. Brand-new.”

  “I like that,” the second man said. “I don’t like walking around with no gun that I don’t know where it’s been before. You can’t tell what’ll happen, you go in on a simple job and something goes wrong and you figure, shit, seven to ten at least, depending on who’s sitting, and the next thing you know they traced the god-damned thing back to some guy that used it on a hit and you got an accessory-after hanging over you. It’s dangerous enough as it is without taking that kind of a chance.”

  “That’s what I figured,” the stocky man said. “Ordinarily, I don’t like to go that high, but I figured, well, if it’s good stuff it’s probably worth the money. There’s so much shit around, you know? Guy was telling me, he was talking to this nigger about a warehouse he’d been looking at. See, it was in the jungle there and he was looking for somebody that could sit in a car without looking like he didn’t belong there, you know? Straight cash, a hundred bucks to sit in the car, thousand if they got what they went after. Couldn’t miss, he was saying, color tee-vees, sewing machines, portable stereos, that kind of thing. Real good stuff, move it fast. So he tells this big coon he’ll have to have a gun and the guy says, all right, I know where I can get a pretty good piece.

  “So they pick him up and they’re on the way to get the truck and so forth, and the guy tells me he says to him: ‘Oh by the way, you got yourself a gun, I suppose.’ And the nigger says sure, and he pulls out this shopping bag, and what has he got in there but one of those German Mausers, machinepistol, remember the kind that had that wooden holster that you could put on and use it like a rifle? Beautiful thing. So they’re all very impressed and they’re riding along on the Lynnway, I guess it was, and anyway the guy says to him, well, is it loaded? And the jig says, no, he’s going to load it right there. So he comes up with this clip and he snaps it in and that whole clip went, barrap, just like that, something like a handful of nine-millimeters flying around in the car and people practically jumping out of windows. So they hadda call off the job, of course, and get rid of the car. Nobody got hurt, but the next day the guy goes back again to look at the warehouse and there’re the distributor’s trucks pulled up outside. ‘I never been so pissed off in my life,’ he says to me. ‘You know what they got in there now? They got blankets. Tons and tons of fucking blankets, and I coulda had a million bucks worth of tee-vees if it wasn’t for that stupid nigger and his goddamned gun. Never trust a goddamned nigger,’ he says, ‘never trust them, that’s all. They’ll fuck you up every time.’ ”