The Pariot GAme

by George V. Higgins

  “Waste?” Jenny said. “You don’t call what you just did wasting an expensive shirt that I gave you for Christmas? Ruining it like that?”

  Riordan reached the bookcase. He crouched and pulled from the middle shelf a black leather holster with a triple harness. It was dusty. He used the shirt to wipe it off. “Jenny,” he said, putting on the shirt, “everything’s a waste, you look at it that way. Hell, at least these past two or three weeks of my life’ve been a waste, when I was working.”

  “Really, Pete?” Freddie said.

  “Yeah,” Riordan said. He fitted the top holster harness through the circle he had cut in the arm socket of the shirt, leaving the holster outside the shirt. He buckled the harness over his shoulder, under the shirt. “I didn’t have much on this group when I started, and most of what I had was wrong when I got it, or so it seems now. And then most of what I’ve gotten since is pretty damned near useless. The IRA’s out there all right, and they’re doing exactly what those guys down in Washington think they’re doing, which is running guns back to the Old Sod. But good Christ, these guys’ve been at it now at least since Cromwell. They may be communists and they may be crazy, but the fellas ain’t stupid. They don’t leave any more evidence than the gentle wind drops, blowing across the Lakes of Killarney. Guys down at Tenth and Constitution there in Washington’re all over me like Paddy’s best Sunday go-to-Mass suit. I don’t think they ever heard of probable cause to suspect that a crime’s been committed and a given person or persons committed it. Politicians, running the cops and play-acting like they were cops themselves. Just won’t listen to me. On what I’ve got, I couldn’t get a warrant for a free Big Mac and fries.”

  He separated the incisions he had made at the chest line of the shirt and threaded the straps from the top and bottom of the holster under it, sliding the top loop over his left shoulder, buckling the bottom strap tightly just below his right nipple. He expanded his chest, expelled his breath, rode the chest strap down slightly on his rib cage, and began to button the shirt, the holster riding empty outside the body of the shirt, under his arm.

  “See, the Provos, Fred, are pros. They are dealing with other assassins over there. They are used to it. They come over here and they deal with the American Irish. Not pros, most of us, unless you mean golf for two-dollar Nassau. And bullshitting, of course. The people the IRA uses? They’re a bunch of well-nourished American kids with strong teeth and good clothes and plenty of milk and good food. Some of those kids are old enough to be adults, but they never made it. They’re playing ‘Kevin Barry’ on the barroom piano, and raising money for the IRA bandits by doing it. So, when I go after the rebels, the best I can hope to get for information is a bunch of people who know all the words to ‘Kevin Barry’ and not a damned thing in this world about police work and investigations. Or the real IRA, as far as that goes. I can’t do it all myself, and I’ve got no one, as usual, to help me. Kind of discouraging. Makes you kind of want to let the bastards kill each other over in Connaught. Washington says I can’t. My own fault, for tripping over that guy in Listowel that was wanted here, when I was there just for a general look around. Now they think I can flush those boyos out of the bushes whenever they snap their fingers. Poor judgment on my part. Next time I’ll stand the fugitive a round of the Guinness, and good luck to ye, lad. Up the Rebels.”

  Riordan sat down on the couch. He pulled on his dirty socks, then his boots. He stood up and started for the kitchen. “Believe I’ll have a drink,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you ever drank when you were working,” Jenny said.

  “This is part of the work, my lass, I assure you,” Riordan said. He poured a double shot of bourbon and put two ice cubes in it. He added an equal amount of water. “If you think I’m going to wander into a strange Southie bar at eight o’clock at night, with no whisky on my breath, knowing the IRA is probably in there, you are crazy. A Brooklyn Jew drinking tea and lecturing on the benefits of promiscuous mutual masturbation for the vaginal congestion suffered by the Little Sisters of the Poor’d have a longer life expectancy. No need making your life harder’n it needs to be.”

  He walked back into the living room, set the drink on the shelf, took the gun and the belt holster from the top of the bookcase, removed the gun from the holster, opened the cylinder and ejected the bullets. He removed an open box of shells from the bookcase, opened it, and dumped the bullets in. He took a cleaning kit from the middle shelf and brought the gun and the kit to the coffee table. From the magazine rack, he removed a newspaper. He spread it out and began to clean and oil the gun.

  “I don’t like to watch this,” Jenny said. “That thing makes me sick.”

  “Yup,” Riordan said, “me too. Trouble is, I tried and failed to get a Dairy Queen franchise in Poughkeepsie, many years ago, so now instead of carrying pre-mix soft ice cream to the freezers, I have to carry this. God’s punishment on me. I bear it nobly, I think. It’s also handy, if somebody else decides to try to make me sick.”

  “That cleaning fluid stinks,” Jenny said.

  “Don’t stink as bad as cordite,” Riordan said. “Don’t hurt your nose as much as when you don’t use it, and you shoot, and you’ve got some tiny little obstruction in that barrel which makes all your nasty plans for the other guy blow up right in your own face. No, indeed.” He dried the weapon and oiled it sparingly. He put it down on the papers and had some more of his drink. He stared out the window and watched the edge of the sunset declining into the river.

  “I wish you’d do something else, Pete,” Jenny said. “I love you, but I wish you’d do something else.” He did not say anything.

  “Jenny,” Freddie said suddenly but not angrily, “I think that’ll do it. If the sight of the farm machinery bothers you so you can’t keep your mouth shut, take your mouth to your room.” Jenny looked at her, startled. Freddie was smiling at her. Jenny nodded, and walked toward her bedroom. Riordan continued to stare out the window.

  “You gonna be around long, honey?” Freddie said. “I thought I might take a bath.”

  “A while,” he said. “A while. I’ll sing out if I leave before you’re marinated.”

  “See you in the morning,” she said, as he got up and went toward the bookcase. He glanced at her, altered his direction, met her in the hallway to the kitchen, bent over and kissed her.

  She went down the hall to the bathroom. He returned to the bookcase and took out a new box of shells. He took it to the coffee table, opened it, and began to load the gun.

  WEST BROADWAY and Broadway in South Boston are one wide street with a hitch in it at the Dorchester Street intersection. They lie roughly south-southeast, west-northwest, terminated by the intersection at the bridge over the Fort Port Channel, rank and sluggish at the western end, terminated at the southern end by Pleasure Bay. The buildings along the Broadways crowd the edges of the sidewalks and in many instances share common side walls. They are two- and three-story affairs, mostly residential. The wooden buildings are faced with clapboards painted light green, faded red, bright light blue or ivory. White trim is popular. The better ones at the corners have clapboard on the side walls. Some even have it on the back. The lesser buildings have the clapboards on the front, but the sides are done in tarpaper, textured and patterned in pitiable imitation of brick. Most of the buildings have six apartments, three on each side of the center doors which open onto narrow concrete steps. There are ornate iron bay windows for many of the front and side room apartments. There are no trees to speak of along Broadway. Except for the street lights, the only decorations are the Pepsi signs over the doors to the variety stores and lunchrooms and the Narragansett, Busch and Schlitz signs lighted over the secretive doors of the saloons.

  Riordan drove the green Ford down Broadway at a reasonable rate of speed, giving no indication that he was looking over the men, women and children who sat on the doorsteps, lounged against the lampposts or pushed single bags of groceries along the sidewalks in wheeled wire baskets.
The people, who were watching him, gave no evidence of doing so. Only the teenagers showed much sign of life, the boys in their summer wiffles, tee-shirts, jeans and sneakers moving in the deepening twilight heat with spastic exaggeration that they took for swagger, the girls in tight jeans and tank tops rewarding the boys with spells of convulsive laughter that required them to bend over double, and then, when they had finished laughing, to swat the jokers of the moment on the upper left arms.

  At intervals along Broadway, older teenagers convened in automobiles, double and triple parking, leaning against fenders, sharing bottles of Budweiser and Busch. The drivers usually remained in their cars, some of them caressing the foreheads of their girlfriends, who lay on their backs on the front seats and hung their feet out the passenger windows, dangling their strapless wooden-soled fuck-me shoes over the pavement. The older kids were not quite as practiced as their parents in the art of watching without seeming to watch; they stared with hungry anger as the green Ford went by. Several mouthed “fuckin’ cop” to each other, and one kid, waving a king-size can of Bud, darted from between the clustered rows of cars waving the beer and shouting: “Nigger lover, Nigger lover.” He threw the can after Riordan’s car, the beer spiraling out of the top as the can arched through the evening, landing twenty yards behind the moving rear bumper. In the mirror, as he paused for the next light, Riordan saw an old man get up from the steps across the street from where the can hit, walk out and pick it up, shaking his head. He moved slowly back toward his seat, raising the can to his mouth and drinking from it.

  Three blocks west of the Dorchester Street intersection, Riordan slowed even more. The street was clear, and he made a sweeping U-turn, nosing the Ford into a parking place at the end of the block, pulling it back just far enough from the Oakleigh intersection to leave the route clear while preventing anyone else from parking in front of him. He studied the intersection. There were a utility pole with a fire box and a street lamp on the corner opposite his car. There was a newspaper vending machine on the opposite corner. There were no trash barrels to his right on either side of Oakleigh. The lights in the first-floor apartment next to the passenger side of his car were dim, and he could see a television flickering in the gloom. Lace curtains slowly billowed languidly from the open window, furled themselves in the light breeze, and were swept in again. He supposed that the bottom edges must be dirty from the grime on the sills.

  Riordan, first struggling into the gray tweed jacket, opened the driver’s door and got out of the Ford. He locked it with his left hand, while simultaneously slipping his right hand inside the jacket to adjust the holster slightly on his torso. He could leave the jacket unbuttoned when he wore the shoulder holster. It was not as comfortable as the belt holster for driving or sitting at the desk, but it was easier to hide and faster to use.

  Riordan turned away from the car. There was a man hidden in the shadows on the opposite corner of West Broadway. His feet and lower legs were visible in the light from the street lamp on the corner opposite him on Oakleigh Street. He wore a cap pulled over his face. Riordan could not make out the color.

  Riordan crossed Broadway at a slight diagonal, reaching the south-southwesterly side in the middle of the block. He stepped between an old Plymouth and a recent Ford that had been hit on the left rear quarter panel; the cars were parked very closely, and Riordan had to help his locking knee through with his hand. Once on the sidewalk, he picked the route in the middle, allowing the light from the street lamp on the corner of Cottage Gate Street to hit him full. Beyond the light, on the other side of Cottage Gate, the Kildare Tap occupied a one-story building.

  The Kildare had a white hollow sign, illuminated from within, furnished by Schlitz. The corner of the building at the point of the intersection had been chopped off, so that the door invited trade from both streets. The entrance was slightly recessed on a low concrete rise. The Schlitz sign was suspended from a steel frame mounted on the roof above the door. The Schlitz logo was large and brilliant. The name of the tavern was painted in black block letters, large and plain, below the ornate beer trademark. There was a long narrow window, the sill at chest level, about six feet long, set in the Cottage Gate side wall. There was another window, the same size and height from the ground, set in the brick wall fronting on West Broadway. Over the door frame there was a large electric lantern, made to resemble the gas lights of England, but it was enclosed in mottled golden glass that made everything dim except for the patch of light thrown on the entryway from the bottom, and the white Schlitz logo affixed to the front. There was a Budweiser neon sign in the West Broadway window, and there was a Miller neon sign in the Cottage Gate window.

  Riordan checked traffic. There was none. He crossed Cottage Gate, his right hand in his right-hand pocket. Just before he reached the curbing, he took out his handkerchief. A quarter fell from it onto the pavement. Holding the handkerchief in his hand, he bent to search for the quarter, turning to avoid throwing a shadow on the gutter by standing between it and the street lamp on the corner. He spotted the quarter, bent over, picked it up, straightened up, put the coin back in his pocket, and without changing his position, blew his nose. The man who had stood at the corner of Oakleigh and West Broadway was gone. The street was empty, although the parking places were full. The apartments fronting on West Broadway were also quiet, except for the occasional curtains rustling out over windowsills and fluttering back inside.

  Riordan turned again and walked up to the door of the Kildare, putting his handkerchief back in his pocket. He opened the door and went inside. The door closed behind him on a pneumatic piston. To his left, under the West Broadway window, there were four Formica tables, with tan tops, each with two chairs. There were two men talking quietly over beers at the farthest. The inside wall running toward the rear from the West Broadway wall was long enough for nine tables adequate to seat four men eating or six men drinking. There were two men at each of the first five tables, with two cribbage games in progress. Two tables were vacant. The last four-man table in the corner at the rear was occupied by at least two men, perhaps three. Riordan could not see them very well, because they sat under a high buttressed shelf which held a large color television set. The picture showed leopards or cheetahs chasing gazelles across a broad plain sodded in tall brown grass. The gazelles tried very hard to escape and some of them did, so that the leopards or cheetahs had to skid to a halt, or fall over and look foolish. The sound was off on the set.

  There was a U-shaped bar in the center of the room, with red vinyl upholstered stools around the outside perimeter. It had a thick, raised, rounded rim in front. The bar was dark wood. There were eight plain white canisters on it. There was an island in the center bay where the liquor was displayed on tiered translucent white shelves, lighted from below. There were three tiers that extended about ten feet in the center of the bar area. They were very crowded. There were draft beer and ale taps, two banks on each side. There was a mesh rubber mat, about eighteen inches long and a foot wide, in front of each tap. Between the taps, on each side of the bar, there was a gray National Cash Register. Above the bar there was a veneer coping the same shape on the ceiling. There were seven dim white lights under it, aimed upward against the white ceiling, three on each side and one over the middle of the narrow end of the bar at the door. At the rear of the bar there were two small serving windows, one on each side. There was a blackboard between them—it had been wiped but not washed of the day’s menu’s chalk dust. There was one man leaning back against the wall on the last seat at the bar on Riordan’s right. The nine four-man tables along the Cottage Gate wall were unoccupied.

  Riordan walked down the right side of the bar and took a stool in the middle. He rested his hands on the bar. After a while the bartender, a thin man in his late fifties with very thin gray hair combed straight back, emerged from the room behind the television pedestal opening into the corridor to the back room. He wore a white shirt that did not fit him. He was doing up the zipper of his
dark pants. He ducked under the bar at the end on the other side and reappeared through a kneehole, inside the island enclosure. He took a rag from the counter and leaned on it with his right hand while he watched one of the cheetahs. Riordan’s view of the television was blocked. “You see that, Jimmy?” the bartender said. “Jesus, that fucker can run.” One of the men at the table said something in a low voice. “Fuckin’ A right, you are,” the bartender said. “Only problem that fucker’s got’s the fact he’s not all black and he walks on his hands too. Way he can jump, run, if he looked something like a man he’d play inna fuckin’ NBA any day.”

  The man at the end of the bar pulled himself away from the wall. “Hey, Patrick,” he said, “ya dumb son of a bitch.”

  The bartender did not look at him. “Yeah, numb-nuts? Whaddaya you want?”

  “I don’t want nothin’, asswipe,” the customer said. “Oh, I could maybe use another fuckin’ beer before the fuckin’ sun comes up. But hey, you got another customer here. He ain’t had nothing yet, you stand there like a big dumb cocksucker, watchin’ television.”

  “Eat shit, numb-nuts,” the bartender said.

  “Hey, mister,” the customer said to Riordan, “you sure you wanna stay in this here fuckin’ hole?” Riordan turned and looked at him. “See what we got to go through here, the fuckin’ treatment we fuckin’ get, tryin’ get this fuckin’ asshole here, pour us a fuckin’ beer? See? I don’t wanna make you feel bad, mister, but you sure picked a fuckin’ winner of a fuckin’ bar, you pick this fuckin’ place and this fuckin’ asshole runnin’ it. I was you, I’d go someplace else. This fuckin’ guy wouldn’t give the fuckin’ Pope a fuckin’ drink.”

  “Hey, numb-nuts,” the bartender said, “the next time you’re talkin’, your pal the Pope, you can tell him for me if he comes back around this town he should make plans to drop around and I will personally buy him as many drinks he wants. Onna house. That don’t apply you, though. You’re still supposed to pay cash, and I’m telling you, you better pay me cash tomorrow when the eagle shits, you’re not gonna have no fuckin’ credit anymore like the boss says I’m not supposed to give you and I risk my job, I give you every week. You gotta get a better job, numb-nuts. You ain’t making enough dough pushin’ broom down the carbarn, pay for your drinks. That’s why you’re always going tab.”