The Pariot GAme

by George V. Higgins

  THE WAITER brought the oysters and the beer to the table and set them in front of Lobianco. He returned to the serving tray and brought a bowl of fish chowder which he set before Greenan. He said the chowder dish was very hot, and he left the table. Seats scooped an oyster out of its shell, dipped it in horseradish, dipped it in cocktail sauce, chewed noisily and said: “Ahh. I tell you, Ticker, you should get yourself an order of these oysters. These’re really good. Nice and crisp, you know? Delicious.” He took a gulp of beer. “Howsa chowder? Looks good, all that butter on the top and everything. I had it here a couple times. Very tasty.”

  “Seats,” Greenan said, “look, now, all right?”

  “Jesus Christ, Ticker,” Seats said, “eat, eat. You don’t wanna let it get all cold there, you know. I realize chowder’s even better warmed up the day after you cook it. But you’re not gonna be here tomorrow, I miss my guess. They are not gonna save it for the next two years, you know, you got another favor that you want from me and I haul you in here again, carrying a bag, looks like you brought your own lunch and the only thing you wanna order’s some iced tea, to go with your peanut butter crackers.”

  “Seats,” Greenan said, “this is serious, all right?”

  “Oh,” Seats said, “I’m sure it is, Ticker.” He speared two oysters on his fork, dipped them both, and put them in his mouth. “Needs some lemon,” he said reflectively. He stabbed the lemon wedge with the fork and squeezed it over the remaining oysters. “Always remember this, Ticker, when you’re dining in some classy joint, right? You got to puncture the lemon before you squeeze it. Otherwise you’re liable, spray juice and pulp all over everybody. You were saying something?” He resumed chewing.

  “I said, this’s serious,” Greenan said, desperately. The chowder steamed in front of him.

  “I’m sure it is, is what I said,” Seats said. “If you didn’t tell me it was serious, I would know it was serious, because you are paying a lot of money for that chowder and you are letting it get old in front of you. Pretty soon them flounders in there’re gonna be on Social Security and shivering in their unheated apartments.” He speared two more oysters.

  “Seats,” Greenan said, still not eating, “will ya lemme talk?”

  “Sure,” Seats said, chewing. “You can talk all you want. That’s why you’re taking me to lunch. Only thing is, two guys go to lunch, it’s impolite if one of them doesn’t eat, you know? Makes the other guy feel embarrassed.” He belched softly and took another drink of beer. “My God,” he said, shaking his head, “there is nothing quite like a good glass of cold beer with some oysters on a warm summer day. Didn’t used to be you could get oysters inna summer. You remember that, Ticker? Only time you could get oysters was in the winter, months with an r in them. Supposed to give you food poisoning, you ate them inna summer.

  “You know why that is? You think the oysters get poisonous all of a sudden, end of April, they’re not good to eat again until Labor Day? Nah. Refrigeration. They didn’t have no refrigeration when they had that rule. Oysters spoiled in warm weather. That’s all. Nothing else to it. My father, my father loved oysters. Right after Labor Day he would start eating them, but bang, right on the dot of May first, he would stop again. But that was the reason. No reason for it at all, now. Get oysters any time you want, all year round.” He took another and dipped it. “Expensive though, I will say that.”

  “Seats,” Greenan said, taking a spoonful of chowder, “will ya lemme talk about Magro, the Magro case? All right?”

  “Ticker,” Seats said, leaning forward, “sure I will let you talk about the Magro case. But like I said, I know you. And I know why you’re in such a hurry to talk about the Magro case. You’re gonna eat your chowder, and tell me what it is you wanna tell me, and then all of a sudden you’re gonna remember an important appointment and you’re gonna get up before the rest of the lunch comes and run out of here with your undies in your pocket, and skip on the check. I’ve seen you do it before, and you got to pardon me, but this was all your idea and you are not gonna pull the scoot on me. Those other guys that you stuck with the bill, they hadn’t been around as long as I have. You tell me your story and you eat your fuckin’ soup, and you eat your baked potato and you drink your fuckin’ wine. And I will have my crab cocktail and my Dover sole and my wine, and if I feel like it I will have some coffee, and then my faithful Indian companion here will bring us the check and you will still be here, to pay it. I’ve seen lots of horses, over Suffolk Downs, couldn’t get out of the gate as fast as you can get away from a table when you think the check’s coming and you might have to pay it. Like you agreed. I bet on most of them horses, I am sorry to say. If my horses were as quick as you getting away from a check, I would be a millionaire.”

  Seats took another oyster. “So,” he said, “here is your choice. As you know, I can outtalk you. I can outtalk any guy in Boston that’s got an all-night call-in show, along with all the nutcakes that call him up. You wanna get cute with me, you won’t get to the Magro case until the check comes, and then I will bounce outta here like I was Tinker Bell and you never will get to tell me what is on your mind. But you will still pay for lunch. Which is what I have got in mind. Eat your soup.”

  Greenan began to eat the chowder. “Don’t eat so fast, Ticker,” Seats said. “First thing you know, you’ll give yourself indigestion and you’ll have to find somebody, takes Maalox, and bum a couple off him, and a friendly cow that doesn’t know you and will give you a glassa milk, free.” Seats took two more oysters, put sauce on them and put them in his mouth.

  “Look, Seats,” Greenan said.

  “I am looking,” Seats said. “You don’t have to call my attention to it.” He chewed his oysters. “You oughta know better’n that, nice Irish boy like you, had a good upbringing. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “For Christ sake, Seats,” Greenan said, with his mouth full, “you’re doing it. You’ve been doing it since you got those oysters.”

  “Of course,” Seats said. “Everybody knows I’m vulgar. You’re supposed to have some class, even if you are running around with ladies’ underwear in your pockets.”

  Greenan threw his napkin on the table. “Are you gonna listen to me or not, Seats?” he said.

  Seats chewed silently. He took another oyster and put it into his mouth. He chewed. With his mouth full, he drank beer and swallowed. He took another oyster. He chewed some more. He drank more beer. He swallowed.

  “Well?” Greenan said.

  “I’m thinking,” Seats said. “Is it all right if I think, for Christ sake? Good God, I try to do a man a favor and come to lunch with him, and all he does is yell at me. I need this? I can get yelled at without even leaving my desk.”

  “You keep this up,” Greenan said, “and I am warning you: I will get out of here and you can pay for your own goddamned oysters and your crabmeat and your goddamned fish that you ordered with the lobster sauce and the fancy French wine.”

  “Okay,” Seats said, “go ahead. You’re right. I can pay for it. Of course, on the other hand, you won’t have told me whatever the hell it is that you want me to do. But that’s your business, none of mine.” He put the last oyster in his mouth.

  “I assume you know your business, Ticker.”

  Greenan took the napkin back and tucked it into his shirt.

  He sighed. He went back to the chowder. “It’s a serious thing, like I said,” he said.

  “I heard of very few murder cases that were all in fun,” Seats said. “What’d he do?”

  “He killed a guy,” Greenan said, eating chowder rapidly.

  “Well,” Seats said, “no shit. You mean to tell me a guy doing time for murder got himself convicted of killing somebody? Son of a bitch, Ticker, I tell you, a man learns something different every time he runs into you. And all these years I been thinking when they charged you with murder, it meant you let your dog run around with no license or you threw your beer bottles on the neighbor’s lawn. Goddammit, it�
��s a rare day you don’t find out something new in this great land of ours.”

  “Seats,” Greenan said, finishing his chowder and wiping his mouth, “lemme up, all right? The guy’s a convicted murderer.”

  The waiter took away the oyster plate and the chowder bowl. He brought the crab cocktail and set it before Seats. Seats nodded. The waiter brought the Muscadet and displayed the label to Seats. “Fine,” Seats said. “Open the bugger and pour me some.” The waiter returned to his station for a corkscrew. “Who’d he kill, Ticker?”

  “He killed another hood,” Greenan said, “a guy out in Framingham.”

  “Another hood?” Seats said. “This means the guy’s a hood himself, and he’s going for a pardon? Good luck to you and the Red Sox, Ticker. I couldn’t get that one through the Council with a crowbar. You got any idea what happened to the guys that let the boss out, about fifty years ago? Actually, it was less’n that, and he wasn’t the boss, not then anyway, but there was air-conditioned hell to pay. One guy went to jail, for Christ sake.” Seats took a forkful of crabmeat and dipped it in the cocktail sauce. “I can see, maybe, a guy killed his wife and he’s not gonna do it again, for goddamned sure, her being dead and all. But a hood kills a hood and we let the winning hood out and tell him not to worry, go forth and sin no more? Christ sake, Ticker, I’d’ve known it was this kind of weight you’re asking me to carry, I wouldn’t’ve asked for fuckin’ lunch, no matter how this’s hurtin’ your feelings.” He chewed crabmeat. “I would’ve told you I want a fuckin’ pension, for Christ sake, and a condo down Sea Island, Georgia, and maybe a little motorboat, I can go fishing.”

  “No, look, Seats,” Greenan said. “Magro hasn’t got any money.”

  “This’s really good crabmeat, Ticker,” Seats said, chewing. “You oughta have some.” The waiter brought the opened bottle of Muscadet and poured a little. Seats tried it and smacked his lips appreciatively. “My friend,” he said, “thou hast saved the good wine until the last. Pour me a glass there, and bring me a bucket of ice so the rest of it doesn’t get warm.” The waiter bowed, and left the table. “Okay, Ticker,” Seats said, “what is it exactly that I am supposed to look at?”

  “This guy,” Greenan said, “this guy Michael Magro is small-time stuff. No heavy hitter. He never pulled a trigger on anybody before in his life.”

  “Yeah,” Seats said, eating crabmeat. “How you know that?”

  “Well,” Greenan said, moving around in the chair as Seats punctured another lemon and squeezed it on the crabmeat, “I just know it.”

  “Right,” Seats said, taking another hunk of crabmeat, “and I know that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. How you know so much about this guy? Where you get your information? How good is it? How do I know somebody didn’t blow smoke up your ass and now you’re tryin’, blow the same smoke up my ass? Used smoke, for Christ sake.”

  “Look,” Greenan said, “his mother’s a great friend of my mother’s.”

  “For all I know,” Seats said, “George Washington’s mummy played bridge every week with Benedict Arnold’s. What’s that got to do with me? That doesn’t mean shit. You got to come up with something better’n that.”

  Greenan slumped in the chair as Lobianco finished the crabmeat and drank wine. “Seats,” Greenan said. “Do me one small favor, all right?”

  “Right,” Seats said. “One small favor, like get a killer out of the slammer so he can do it again. I changed my mind, Ticker. I’ll buy lunch. You go on your way with your nighties and I’ll have my fish.”

  “That nightgown isn’t mine,” Greenan said. His face was red.

  “All right,” Seats said, “it’s somebody else’s nightgown. I believe you, Ticker. I believe everything you say. This guy Magro is a poor unfortunate kid that happened to get caught dusting off another poor hood that wasn’t quick enough on the draw for him, and if he gets out, he will never do it again. I believe that. You know what gullible means? Consider me gullible. Who’d he kill?”

  “It was a guy named Holby,” Greenan said, “and that’s really all I know. Except that Holby had a record.”

  SEATS WAS in his office with his feet on the desk. He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. His face was flushed. He had put on his half-glasses for reading, but he was laughing and they had slid down nearly to the end of his nose. He had the phone receiver buried in his jowls again.

  “Ahh, Mattie,” he said, “I tell ya, ya wouldn’t fuckin’ believe it. First thing the guy does is, he shows up late, right? And he’s got this bag with him. It’s one of those; Lord and Taylor things. So I take it away from him and he’s got a fuckin’ nightie and some sexy little drawers in it, and I wave them all around. I thought he was gonna have some kind of a fit, everybody in the place’s sittin’ there laughing at him and you know how he looks. He don’t look like no self-respecting Irish at all that comes from Rozzie Square and knows how to do the right thing. He looks like some hayshaker, just come down from Bangor, see his first tall buildings. There he is, all skin and bones, his ears stick out like them television antenna things and he gets his hair cut down the barber school where they do you for a quarter if you let the rookies practice on you, and he’s got on this suit that I bet his grandfather liked pretty well when he got it for twelve bucks, two pairs of pants with extra-heavy knees back at Raymond’s just before the war, the one that Pershing was in. And I’m wavin’ these undies around at everybody. And he sits down and I stick him for the whole ball of wax, the crabmeat cocktail and everything. I mean, Mattie, this’s gotta be serious, right? Ticker Greenan, buying a lunch like that? I had all I could do, I didn’t ask him the minute he came through the door, what the hell it was. I mean, it hadda be he wants his nephew to be appointed Pope or something, it’s that important to him. Thing of it is, though, I know the minute he gets it offa his chest, he’s gonna screw on me and beat lunch.

  “So, Mattie,” Seats said, “I finally let the guy talk, and you know what is bothering him? This guy Magro that wants the commutation thing there, the pardon? And it’s murder, for Christ sake. No murder that matters a good goddamn to anybody, not like he tried to shoot the Governor or something. Hell, maybe even that wouldn’t get anybody too excited, considering the number of guys I heard over the years say they’d like to try it. But I thought maybe he wanted the black lady knocked down that we got coming up this after the judgeship and he wants me give it his idiot nephew that’s the deputy clerk in Lawrence, which there is no way on earth I can do. And the only other thing that I can think of that’d make Ticker spring for lunch is the SJC thing. Not even Ticker’s got the balls to go for that one for some hacker like he’s always putting up.

  “But, no, what he wants is a third-rate hood that knocked off another lowlifer, and I can’t figure it out. So I make it sound real difficult, you know? I say to him, I say, ‘Ticker, Ticker, murder one? You been reading all that stuff in the papers, you think the Council’s just a cheap pawnshop? Good Christ, Ticker. Kid makes a little mistake, like he steals a car or something, I maybe got some chance, I can do something for you. But murder one? Who is this guy Magro? He Mrs. Ticker’s long-lost brother or something?’ And Ticker won’t tell me. I got to snake it out of him like he had the reason under one of his tooth fillings. And I finally get it out of him. At least he says I got it out of him. He is doing a favor for Monsignor Fahey down at Precious Blood. Seems like Monsignor Fahey’s faithful housekeeper, some simple-minded old tad that’s most likely been tiddly on the communion wine for about a hundred years, this kid Magro’s her nephew and she’s been so sick at heart she practically got football knees making novenas for the poor lad, and now she’s gettin’ ready to kick the bucket and Fahey wants this favor done her.”

  Seats paused and listened. “No, Mattie, no, I’m not sure of that at all. That’s probably what Ticker thinks he’s doing, nice little favor for the Monsignor and everything, but Ticker’s so dumb you could tell him you could get by on eating nothing
but wood, and he would think you gave him a surefire way to save more money. He would go out and get a truckload of used shingles and siding. That’s why I’m calling you. See if you can find out what the hell is going on here, will ya? It’s one thing to have somebody snorkel you, happens to the best of us, but if it’s Ticker Greenan doing it, that’d be very embarrassing. Besides, if there is money changing hands here, I want to know about it. Isn’t anybody going to whipsaw old Seats into settin’ up a payoff, puts me in the can. I understand the food in there is lousy.”

  Pete Riordan entered the east wing of the main building of the State House through the back door at the portico. He climbed the marble steps with difficulty, his boot heels slipping somewhat, and turned right down the corridor toward Lobianco’s office. He passed the elevator on the right where two men in short-sleeved shirts were studying a racing form, came to the door to Lobianco’s office and went in. His face was streaming with sweat.

  Alice Vickery looked up from her paperback copy of Rich Man, Poor Man.

  “Can I help you?” she said. “My God, you’re roasting in that.” She put the book down. “Take your jacket off and sit down, wearing a heavy thing like that in weather like this. You’ll have a stroke for yourself.” She started to get up.

  Riordan smiled at her. “No, really, it’s okay, ma’am. You know how it is: Every man to his own hangover cures. I’ve got several, and this is one of them. When I make a fool of myself, I sweat the poison out of me the next day.”

  “I have a beer, myself,” she said. “That always works.”

  “Ma’am,” Riordan said, “I didn’t say the sweat cure is the only one I use. I also replace the old poison with new poison, when I’ve got a really critical attack. Which I have today. Is Mister Lobianco in?”

  “Yes,” she said, “and it’s a good thing for you, too, because he’s got his own air conditioner in there and he keeps that office cold enough to age meat in. Who’s calling, please?”