The Friends of Eddie Coyle

by George V. Higgins

  “More’n likely,” Dillon said. “Depends, I suppose. But more’n likely.”

  “This is pretty important,” the man said. “That’s why I got in touch with you. He told me, he told me I was to get somebody we were sure of, that we could really trust, you know? The kid was pretty close to him, is why we’re moving so fast.”

  “You’re getting ahead of me,” Dillon said. “Who’s the kid?”

  “Donnie Goodweather,” the man said. “You gotta know him. The man treated him like he was his son. Which some people say he was.”

  “I never heard of him,” Dillon said.

  “Well, you’re gonna,” the man said. “They got him this morning up in Lynn, there.”

  “Who did?” Dillon said. “Hey, I hate to sound stupid, and you know me, the man wants it done, I’m here to do it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” the man said. “There was some talk around, maybe you were thinking about some grand jury thing or something. I’m really glad to hear you say that. The man’ll be pleased, too.”

  “So what the hell is going on,” Dillon said.

  “State police,” the man said. “Seems Donnie was sitting outside the Colony Cooperative this morning like he was waiting for somebody, and instead of the people he was expecting to show up, some cops with masks and jackets on show up, and he gets out of his car, he’s got a mask on too, and a gun, and they tell him he’s under arrest, I suppose, and the next thing you know, there’s some shooting. He was dead on arrival. The man’s very upset.”

  “Somebody else have a problem?” Dillon said.

  “Jimmy Scal and Artie Valantropo and Fritzie Webber,” the man said. “They all got bagged in a house up in Nahant this morning. Belongs to this guy that’s the treasurer of the Colony Cooperative from what I hear. Jimmy and Artie and Fritzie went in, and Donnie’s waiting down at the bank. So the three of them go in, and the place’s crawling with cops. Then the cops take the jackets off Artie Van and Jimmy and the masks, and they go down to the bank with this other cop in the car with them, looking scared, I guess, and they get down there. The cops get out of their car, and with the masks on, of course, you know it’s hard to tell, and Donnie gets out of his car, the way I hear it, I was getting all this from Paulie LeDuc, who is Scal’s lawyer, he called right up as soon as he talked to Jimmy up there. So anyway, Donnie gets out of the car and the cops say: ‘Get’em up, you’re under arrest.’ Well, he’s just a kid, and he always hadda pair of rocks on him, the man, I think if he wasn’t the man’s son the way they say, it’s probably because of his guts the man liked him, and the kid starts shooting. They chewed him up pretty good.”

  “Oh oh,” Dillon said.

  “Oh oh is right,” the man said. “The three of them’re up on murder one, they’re gonna be having a hearing this afternoon, and of course they’re gonna get held for the grand jury. The man is hopping goddamned mad.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Dillon said.

  “Well, I don’t blame him either,” the man said.

  “I blame Jimmy Scal, though,” Dillon said. “It’s his own goddamned fault as far as I’m concerned.”

  “How you figure?” the man said.

  “I warned him,” Dillon said. “Picked up something the other day, this guy we both know, me and the Scal, he’s coming up for sentencing pretty soon, and it’s almost a mandatory, you know? But this guy don’t act like he thinks he’s gonna go to jail, which makes me very nervous, you know? Why’s he so confident, maybe he’s thinking about dumping somebody? So I called Jimmy, I told him. I said: ‘You better hang back a few days, you got anything going. I don’t like the way this thing smells.’ But he wouldn’t listen, oh no. Just goes right ahead.”

  “This guy,” the man said, “anybody we know?”

  “Could be,” Dillon said. “We hadda break him up a while back here. He set up Billy Wallace there with a gun that had a history. We hadda teach him. I thought he learned his lesson. I threw a little work his way myself now and then.”

  “Name of Coyle?” the man said.

  “That’s the one,” Dillon said. “I had him driving a truck for me and a fellow up in New Hampshire there and he got hooked with it. Which was why he was coming up. He didn’t talk then, but he had a fall coming and he knew it. I thought maybe he was thinking about dumping me, but of course he wouldn’t do that without making a will first. So I guess he dumped Jimmy and Artie instead. Bastard.”

  “He’s the one the Scal mentioned,” the man said. “LeDuc give his name to the man. Coyle. Eddie Fingers. That’s the one.”

  “You want him hit?” Dillon said.

  “The man wants him hit,” the man said. “There’s more to it than that. He wants it done tonight.”

  “I can’t do it tonight,” Dillon said. “For Christ sake. It takes a little while, you know. I got to line some things up, I need a car and a piece and a driver, and I got to set the man up. Christ, I hit a man, I do it right, I don’t do it like some goddamned kid that caught his girl fucking somebody else.”

  “The man says tonight,” the man said.

  “Well,” Dillon said, “you go back and tell him, you say you talked to me and he knows me, he knows who I am, and you tell him: ‘Look, Dillon’ll make the hit. But he’ll make it right, he’ll make it so there won’t be sixteen hundred squares looking on when he does it.’ You tell him that.”

  “You want to be careful,” the man said, “there’ll be a contract out on you.”

  “You betcher ass I want to be careful,” Dillon said. “I get a fair price. Five grand in front. Speaking of which, where is it?”

  “I haven’t got it now,” the man said. “You do the job, you get it.”

  “Oh,” Dillon said. “Big fancy Jew-type car, four hundred dollar suit, the shoes, the whole bit, and he wants me to make a hit on the cuff. Lemme tell you something, sweet baby, it don’t happen that way. I’m beginning to wonder, did the man send you after all? I never know the man do business like this before. Always very careful, does things inna right way. Not like this, one hand on your dick and the water coming out and the other holding up your goddamned pants when somebody takes your picture. What the fuck’s the matter with you guys down there, you blow your cool permanently?”

  “Now look,” the man said.

  “Now look, nothing,” Dillon said. “I treat a man with respect, I expect him to treat me with a little respect. He knows how I work, what I do, that’s why he wants me. With me it’s strictly cash in advance, no money, no hit. I don’t accept no credit cards, none at all whatsoever. Now I tell you what, you go and tell the man, you say: ‘Dillon’s getting it ready, the car, the gun, the whole thing. He’ll have it all ready to go the minute you press the button.’ Tell him that. And don’t come back up here again with no money. I’m willing to do a favor for anybody, but I got to think of some other things too, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Unless maybe you want me to get Coyle arrested or something, I could do that today, and for nothing.”

  “Don’t bush me,” the man said. “Don’t hand me that crap, you’ll get him arrested. The time comes somebody doesn’t want to be a man, we’ll let you know. You know how to handle these things.”

  “I do,” Dillon said. “That’s why I’m having so much trouble understanding what the fuck is going on here. I think there’s something funny, maybe. You know where to get in touch with me. I’ll line things up, but I don’t move until I get the dough, all right?”

  “The man isn’t going to like it,” the man said.

  “He came looking for me,” Dillon said. “I assume that means he wants me to do something for him, he wants me. I had some hard things he asked me to do, and I did them, and nobody got hurt but the guy that was supposed to get hurt. Nobody on anything I ever did ever ended up in the Death House, which is more’n I can say for some I know.”

  “He knows you’re good,” the man said.

  “All right,” Dillon said. “I’ll be at the plac
e. You want me, you call me, we’ll see what we can do. But we do things the right way, all right?”

  “I’ll see you,” the man said.

  27

  “He didn’t show up,” Foley said. “I sit there for about half an hour, and I have a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. Jesus, I forgot how bad a thing a cheese sandwich is to eat. It’s just like eating a piece of linoleum, you know?”

  “You got to put mayonnaise on it,” Waters said. “It’s never going to have any flavor at all unless you put some mayonnaise on the bread before you put the cheese on.”

  “I never heard of that,” Foley said. “You put it on the outside, do you?”

  “Nah,” Waters said, “you put it on the inside. You still put the butter on the outside and all. But when the cheese melts, there, it’s the mayonnaise that gives it the flavor. You got to use real mayonnaise, though, the stuff with eggs in it. You can use that other stuff that most people use when they say they’re using mayonnaise, that salad dressing stuff, you can use it. But it isn’t going to taste the same. I think that other stuff scalds or something. It doesn’t taste right, anyway.”

  “They don’t go for those refinements in the Rexall’s anyway,” Foley said. “What the hell, you go in there and order a cheese sandwich, they got a whole stack of them, already made up, probably since last Wednesday, and they take out one of them goddamned things, big fat piece of this orange cheese in it, and throw on some grease, they pretend it’s butter but I sure don’t believe that, and then they go and they fuse it all together with a hot press there. My stomach’s still trying to break that thing down into something I can live on, just like a big piece, two big pieces, of bathroom tile with some mastic in between. Served hot. I get sick, you’re gonna have to give me a pension.”

  “You been living off the tit too long, I think,” Waters said. “Getting so you bastards won’t eat anything unless you get it handed up to you at the Playboy Club for God’s sake. Under-cover. My ass. You think I don’t know, you’re taking each other to lunch? Shit. Do you good once in a while, the Joe and Nemo route. That’s where the hoods are anyway, you know. They don’t patronize these high-class joints I’m always seeing on the vouchers, where a piece of meat’s nine bucks. They’re down scrounging, just like you would be if you couldn’t write it up.”

  “Well anyway,” Foley said, “he didn’t show. So I’m sitting there and getting the fish-eye from the waitress, and I had a Coke and my bladder’s beginning to get sore, you know? So I pay up and get out, and I go out on the street, and I’m not too upset. After all, he said he might not show up. So I part with fifteen cents and I get a Record, and what do I see, that the guys he wants to trade off got scooped this morning up in Lynn. So that explains a lot of things.”

  “One of them got dead,” Waters said. “Goodweather, there. I guess he had it in mind to make a fuss or something.”

  “Yeah,” Foley said, “I gotta call Sauter about that. Apologize. I didn’t think he was that good a shot. What’d they hit them with?”

  “Burglary, for the district court,” Waters said. “I imagine the grand jury’ll be getting a better variety of charges. Let’s see, two murders, three robberies, burglary in all of them bankers’ houses, probably gunrunning, stolen cars, conspiracy. Did I leave something out?”

  “Blasphemy,” Foley said. “I always wanted to charge a guy with blasphemy.”

  “What about your friend with the knuckles, now?” Waters said.

  “He goes to jail, looks like,” Foley said. “New Hampshire wasn’t satisfied he helped us grab Jackie Brown there, and I don’t think he’s got anything left to trade now.”

  “Ah, well,” Waters said, “tough shit.”

  28

  Coyle came into Dillon’s place shortly after three-thirty in the afternoon. He took a stool and raised his right hand, then let it fall.

  Dillon poured a double shot of Carstairs and drew a stein of draft beer. He put both in front of Coyle. “You making any money?” he said.

  Coyle drank off the Carstairs. He drank some of the beer. “I wouldn’t exactly put it that way,” he said. “Matter of fact, you was to ask me, I’d have to say I’m not having a very good day.”

  “Hey,” Dillon said. “Why is that?”

  “You heard what happened up in Lynn there,” Coyle said.

  “That was a rough thing,” Dillon said. “I understand that kid there, that got killed, I understand he was in pretty good down in Providence, you know?”

  “I didn’t hear that,” Coyle said. “Gimme some more whiskey.” While Dillon was pouring, Coyle talked. “That’s about the only thing I didn’t hear, though. It figures.”

  “Well, hell,” Dillon said. “It’s not as though you had anything to do with it. From what I hear they were all free, white and twenty-one. They knew what they were getting into. They were big boys.”

  “Yeah,” Coyle said. “Course, this is the end of Artie Van. And Jimmy, too, for that matter. On the other hand, how many guys hit the street on murder one, huh? Wouldn’t matter they was all virgins. Which they aren’t.”

  “Well,” Dillon said, “you got to look at it philosophically, you know? You win some, you lose some. They made, what, about a quarter of a mil in a month? Now you start heaving the pressure on like that, you’re gonna get the fuzz mad. It’s got to happen. And when that happens, hell, they killed two guys didn’t they? When that happens, you take what you get, no money back.”

  “Yeah,” Coyle said, “but they were set up. That’s what bothers me, I think. The cops were waiting for them in that house. Somebody set them right fucking up. I’d like to know who that was.”

  “I imagine they would too,” Dillon said. “Yeah, I would think that’d bother them.”

  “Christ,” Coyle said. “I know Jimmy Scal, I know him pretty good. Well, hell, you know that. I known Jimmy since, I known him for a long time. I hate to see him take this one. You know what’s going to happen, he’s never gonna see the sun shine again. He is in forever.”

  “You never know,” Dillon said. “Maybe they can get the evidence suppressed. That can happen. And a jury’ll do funny things, you know. They might get off. You just can’t tell about these things.”

  “They might get off once,” Coyle said. “They were awful busy, you know. They hit about four counties. I don’t think there was one bank they hit was in the same county as another one. Sooner or later somebody’s going to take them out. They’re all through.”

  “Well, I still say,” Dillon said, “they knew what they were getting into. Did anybody feel sorry for you?”

  “No,” Coyle said. “You got a lot of fucking nerve asking me that.”

  “Well,” Dillon said, “you went through, didn’t you? You took the fall, you didn’t come whining to anybody, say, it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t mean it, look, I’ll throw somebody else in, just let me go. You didn’t do that. You gotta have as much respect for them as they had for you, you know? You were a big boy, you got to think they’re gonna be big boys.”

  “I haven’t been a big boy yet,” Coyle said. “That comes up next week.”

  “I thought it was all over,” Dillon said. “I thought that was all wrapped up.”

  “It is,” Coyle said, “I am, I’m all wrapped up. I’m going down to Danbury, is what I’m gonna do.”

  “How long?” Dillon said.

  “My lawyer,” Coyle said, “my great goddamned lawyer, he figures about two years, probably.”

  “So you do eight months,” Dillon said, “you do a third. You can do that easy. You’ll be out, when, when Gansett opens in the fall. No sweat. And I see you got some money, the other night there. You’re all right. Don’t take it so goddamned serious.”

  “I can’t help it,” Coyle said, “I still feel bad. That Scal, he’s a ballsy guy, you know. I dunno Van. But I know the Scal, and he’s all right. I feel sorry for the Scal, I really do. He’s gonna get life, minimum.”

  From the other end of the ba
r a man rose and answered the phone. He shouted: “For you, Dillon.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Dillon said. “Get you another on the way?”

  “Yeah,” Coyle said. “I’ll have another beer, too.”

  Dillon could see Coyle sitting at the bar while he talked on the telephone. “Yeah, I know who this is,” he said. “Funny thing, he’s in here right now. Putting on a big performance, how sorry he is, how pissed off he is about the way they got set up. Almost enough to make me mad. No, not mad enough for that. Look, you get a man up here this afternoon with the money in an envelope, I’ll see what I can do. Maybe tonight, yeah. I’m not promising anything. I still got to get a car. Yeah, I got somebody can drive. The money first. The money in front. Well, you get the money here, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Look,” Dillon said to Coyle, putting the fresh glasses in front of him, “you’re gonna step on your tongue, you don’t look out. Now, that was a friend of mine, and what he tells me is he can’t go to the Broons tonight. So how about you forget your troubles and come to the game with me, huh? We’ll have some dinner, I’ll take the night off, we see a good game. Rangers. Whaddaya say?”

  “Sounds good,” Coyle said.

  “Sure,” Dillon said. “Come back around six or so, I’d say stay but the way you’re going, you won’t be able to see the game you stay here very much longer. We’ll go have a little wine, maybe a steak, then we go to the game. I guarantee you, by the time you get home tonight, you won’t have a care inna world.”

  “I’ll do it,” Coyle said. “I’ll go call my wife.”

  “Hey, look,” Dillon said, “whyn’t you forget that for once, all right? You can’t tell you know, we might run into something and you wouldn’t want to go right home. So, why call her?”

  “You’re right,” Coyle said. “I got some things to do. I’ll see you back here around six.”

  At five-fifteen a kid in a black turtleneck sweater and a suede jacket came into Dillon’s place. He asked for Dillon. He handed Dillon a business envelope, a fairly fat envelope. “Okay?” he said.