“Okay what?” Dillon said.
“Okay?” the kid said. “Just okay.”
“If it’s okay,” Dillon said, “it won’t bother you. If it isn’t okay, it won’t. Get lost.”
29
In the course of the evening Coyle had several drinks. He drank beer with Dillon during the first period. Bobby Orr swung the Bruins net and faked three Rangers into sprawls. He quartered across the New York goal, faked low and left, shot high and right, and Coyle rose up with Dillon and fourteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty-five others to howl approval. The announcer said: “Goal to Orr, number four.” There was another ovation.
Next to Coyle there was an empty seat. Dillon said: “I can’t understand where the fuck he is. That friend of mine, I was telling you about? He give me both his tickets. I invited my wife’s nephew. I can’t understand where he is. Loves hockey, that kid. I don’t know how he stays in school, he’s always down here, scrounging for tickets. Twenty years old. But a bright kid.”
The kid arrived during the intermission between the first and second periods. He apologized for his tardiness. “I get home,” he said, “I get the message all right, but then I have to go and borrow a car. I thought I was gonna miss the goddamned game.”
“You couldn’t take the trolley or something?” Coyle said.
“Not to fucking Swampscott,” the kid said seriously. “You just can’t get to Swampscott after nine o’clock. I mean it.”
“Hey,” Dillon said, “who wants a beer?”
“I’ll have a beer,” Coyle said. The kid had a beer, too. Dillon had a beer.
In the second period the Rangers opened with a goal on Cheevers. Sanderson went off for roughing. Sanderson came back on. Esposito went off for an elbow check. Sanderson fed Dallas Smith for a shorthanded goal. Orr fed Esposito who fed Bucyk for a goal.
Between the second and third periods, Coyle had trouble following the conversation between Dillon and his wife’s nephew. Coyle went to the men’s room. As he got up, Dillon observed that he might ask if anybody wanted a beer. Coyle returned with three beers, carried carefully before him. There was beer on his trousers. “Hard to carry beer in a crowd like this,” he said.
“You’re not supposed to have beer at the seats,” the kid said.
“Look,” Coyle said, “you want some beer or not?”
During the third period the Rangers got another goal. Sanderson drew a five minute major for fighting. The Bruins won, three to two.
“Beautiful,” Coyle said. “Beautiful. Can you imagine being that kid? What is he, about twenty-one? He’s the best hockey player inna world. Christ, number four, Bobby Orr. What a future he’s got.”
“Hey look,” Dillon said, “I forgot to tell you. I got some girls.”
“Jesus,” Coyle said, “I don’t know. It’s pretty late.”
“Come on,” Dillon said. “Let’s make a night of it.”
“Hey,” the kid said, “hey, I can’t. I gotta get this car back. I got to go home.”
“Where’s your car?” Dillon said to Coyle.
“Cambridge,” Coyle said. “I was over there and I take the trolley in, when I came to your place. I never got back for it.”
“Shit,” Dillon said. “These girls, I mean, they’re absolutely all right. But there isn’t any way. I mean, they’re in Brookline.”
“Well, look,” the kid said. “I could drive you to his car, and then go home. I got a test tomorrow, so I can’t hang around much.”
They had a drink in the tavern on the concourse of the Boston Garden, to let the traffic thin out. Dillon had trouble walking when they got outside. Coyle had more trouble. “You two old bastards,” the kid said, “I don’t know where you’d be without the youth to help you along.” They stumbled over the trolley tracks.
The kid had a 1968 Ford Galaxie, a white sedan. He opened the front passenger door. Dillon and Coyle stood there, weaving back and forth. “Look,” Dillon said, “you ride inna front. I’ll ride inna back. Okay?”
“Okay,” Coyle said. He slid into the passenger seat.
Dillon walked quickly around the back of the car. The kid opened the driver’s door, then reached in and unlocked the left rear door.
Dillon got in and sat down behind the driver. Coyle’s head lay back on the top of the seat. He was breathing heavily.
“You sure you’re gonna be all right to drive,” Dillon said.
“Oh yeah,” Coyle said, his eyes shut. “Absolutely perfectly all right. No sweat. Beautiful night so far.”
“More to come,” Dillon said. He reached down to the floor and groped around. On the mat on the right rear passenger side, he found a twenty-two magnum Arminius revolver, fully loaded. He picked it up and put it in his lap.
“I don’t know where you want me to go,” the kid said. He was backing the car around over the trolley tracks.
“You tell him,” Dillon said to Coyle. Coyle snored.
“Go around the front of the Garden,” Dillon said. “Go out past the Registry and head for Monsignor O’Brien Highway, in case he wakes up. You just drive now.”
“I know what’s going on,” the kid said.
“Good,” Dillon said, “I’m glad to hear that. You just drive. I was you, I’d drive to Belmont, and I’d pick roads where I could go pretty fast without making anybody suspicious. I’d come out on Route 2, and I’d look for a gray Ford convertible in the parking lot of the West End Bowling Alleys. I wouldn’t let nothing disturb me. When I got to the alleys, I’d pull up beside the Ford and get out and get in the Ford and wait for me, and then I’d head back for Boston.”
“Somebody said something about some money,” the kid said.
“If I was you,” Dillon said, “I’d look hard for that convertible. You drive that convertible back to Boston and let me off and if I was you I’d look in that glove compartment for about a thousand bucks before I dropped that car off in the nigger district.”
“Is it gonna be hot?” the kid said.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” Dillon said.
The traffic thinned out rapidly when they got across the river into Cambridge. They proceeded north, following the Route 91 signs. Three miles onto 91 north, they were hitting sixty-five. “You’re gonna turn off pretty soon here,” Dillon said.
“I know, I know,” the kid said.
When the Ford was alone on the road, Dillon brought the revolver up and held it an inch behind Coyle’s head, the muzzle pointing at the base of the skull behind the left ear. Dillon drew the hammer back. The first shot went in nicely. Dillon continued firing, double-action. The revolver clicked on a spent round at last. Coyle lay thrust up against the frame between the doors of the Ford. The speedometer read eighty-five.
“Slow down, you stupid shit,” Dillon said. “You want to get arrested or something?”
“I got nervous,” the kid said. “There were so many of them.”
“There was nine of them,” Dillon said. The car stank of gunpowder.
“It was loud in here,” the kid said.
“That’s why I use a twenty-two,” Dillon said. “I ever let off a thirty-eight two-incher in here, you’d’ve gone right off the road.”
“Is he dead?” the kid said.
“If he isn’t,” Dillon said, “he’s never gonna be. Now slow down and get off this road.”
The bowling alley was dark. The kid pulled the sedan in next to the Ford convertible. “Hey,” he said, “that looks a lot like this car, in this light.”
“You’re learning,” Dillon said, “that’s the idea. Cops’ve been seeing that car all night. Now they’re gonna see another one that looks almost just like it. They won’t search it for a couple hours. Help me stuff him down there.”
They crammed Coyle down onto the floor of the right passenger compartment. They got out of the Ford. “Lock it,” Dillon said. “Keeps the volunteers out of it.”
They got into the convertible. It started at once. “Not a bad car,” the kid s
aid.
“Not a bad car at all,” Dillon said. “Now go back Memorial Drive and take the Mass. Ave. bridge, I gotta get rid of this gun.”
30
Jackie Brown at twenty-seven sat with no expression on his face in the first row behind the bar of Courtroom Four of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The clerk called case number seventy-four-hundred-and-twenty-one-d, United States of America versus Jackie Brown. The bailiff motioned to Jackie Brown to rise.
Also rising was a man beyond the bar. “The case is called for arraignment, your honor,” he said. “The defendant is present with counsel.”
The clerk said: “Jackie Brown, you are charged in this indictment with five counts of possessing machine guns which were not registered to you in the National Firearms Transfer and Registration Record. What say you to this indictment, are you guilty or not guilty?”
Getting up now, slowly, was Foster Clark, counsel for the defendant. “Not guilty,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Jackie Brown looked at Foster Clark contemptuously. “Not guilty,” he said.
“Bail,” the judge said.
“The defendant is free in ten thousand dollars personal security,” the prosecutor said. “The government recommends the same bail be continued.”
“Any objection?” the judge said.
“None,” Foster Clark said.
“Is this case ready for trial?” the judge said.
“The government is ready for trial,” the prosecutor said.
“The defendant,” Foster Clark said, “the defendant would like twenty days to file special pleas.”
“Motion allowed,” the judge said. He consulted his calendar. “This case will be tried on January sixth. How long does the government anticipate the trial will take?”
“We have nine witnesses,” the prosecutor said. “Two days, perhaps two and a half.”
“We will be in recess,” the judge said.
In the corridor outside Courtroom Four, Foster Clark approached the prosecutor. “I was wondering,” he said, “are we really going to have to try this case?”
“Well,” the prosecutor said, “that depends. He’s dead on and gone to heaven, if that’s what you mean. He doesn’t have a prayer.”
“I was wondering if we could work something out,” Clark said. “I haven’t really had a chance to talk with him, but I was wondering.”
“So talk to him,” the prosecutor said. “Find out where he stands, and call me.”
“Suppose he talks,” Clark said, “what’re you going to recommend?”
“Look,” the prosecutor said, “you know I can’t answer that. I never know for sure what the boss is going to want me to do. So why kid each other. My guess, my guess would be we ask for some jail if he pleads, and a lot of jail if he doesn’t.”
“Good Christ,” Clark said, “you guys want to put the world in jail. This is a young kid. He doesn’t have a record. He didn’t try to hurt anybody. He’s never been in court before in his life. He doesn’t even have a goddamned traffic ticket, for God’s sake.”
“I know that,” the prosecutor said. “I also know he was driving a car that cost four grand and he’s twenty-seven years old and we can’t find a place he ever worked. He’s a nice, clean-cut gun dealer, is what he is, and if he wanted to, he could probably make half the hoods and forty per cent of the bikies in this district. But he doesn’t want to do that. Okay, he’s a stand-up guy. Stand-up guys do time.”
“So he’s got to talk,” Clark said.
“Nope,” the prosecutor said, “he doesn’t have to do a damned thing except decide which he wants to do more, talk, and make somebody important for us, or go down to Danbury there and get rehabilitated.”
“That’s a pretty tough choice to make,” Clark said.
“He’s a pretty tough kid,” the prosecutor said. “Look, we don’t need to stand here and play the waltz music. You know what you got: you got a mean kid. He’s been lucky up to now; he’s never been caught before. And you know what I got, too: I got him fat. You’ve talked to him. You saw him and you told him it was talk or take the fall, and he told you to go and fuck yourself, or something equally polite. So now you got to try the case, because he won’t plead without a deal that puts him on the street and I don’t make that kind of deal for machine gun salesmen that don’t want to give me anything. So we try this one, and it’ll take two days or so, and he’ll get convicted. Then the boss’ll tell me to say three, or maybe five, and the judge’ll give him two, or maybe three, and you’ll appeal, maybe, and some time around Washington’s Birthday, he’ll surrender to the marshals and go down to Danbury for a while. Hell, he’ll be out in a year, year and a half. It isn’t as though he was up against a twenty-year minimum mandatory.”
“And in another year or so,” Clark said, “he’ll be in again, here or someplace else, and I’ll be talking to some other bastard, or maybe even you again, and we’ll try another one and he’ll go away again. Is there any end to this shit? Does anything ever change in this racket?”
“Hey Foss,” the prosecutor said, taking Clark by the arm, “of course it changes. Don’t take it so hard. Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes every day.”
“It’s hard to notice, though,” Clark said.
“It is,” the prosecutor said, “it certainly is.”
The Friends of Eddie Coyle Page 15