“Last month?” Amato said. “Last month the bills’re almost a week late going out. The checks’re two and a half, at least. I had guys calling me up. ‘Uh, Mister Amato, about your order?’ And then he tells me, three new transmissions he put in, couple tune-ups, I also owe for three tires they hadda have fixed, one of my great customers don’t know they got curbs on roads, and the guy’s into me for around eight hundred bucks and he wouldn’t mind seeing his money.
“So I go out there,” Amato said, “the kid’s sitting there. She’s putting on nail polish, for Christ sake, she’s talking to her boyfriend onna phone. I wait. I only pay her, for Christ sake. No reason she oughta stop talking about how they’re gonna do it after closing, it’s not closing yet and I’m still paying her. No, of course not. She finally gets off. I tell her, Jesus Christ, we can’t do business like this. We need a wrecker or something, this guy, he’s not gonna send one. ‘Mister Amato,’ she says, ‘I haven’t had time. I’ve been so busy.’ Jesus. I pay that broad one thirty-five for that.”
“That the one with the nice ass?” Frankie said.
“That’s the one,” Amato said. “Before I get through that silly little bitch’s gonna have me in court, and I’m gonna look awful stupid, I’m telling the judge, I got the money, I just couldn’t get the girl to hang up long enough to send it out.”
“How is she?” Frankie said.
Amato did not reply immediately. Then he said: “Well, okay, yeah. But Jesus Christ, I mean, you still gotta get the work done and everything.”
“You don’t learn nothing,” Frankie said. He was grinning. “I bet when you were a little kid it took them about eight years to get you to stop shitting in your pants.”
“I know it,” Amato said. “But, I still can’t be going down to Taunton or some place every day. I got to keep this thing going even if I can’t do anything else, you know?”
“Every day,” Frankie said, “that’d be if you’re going in when it’s open.”
“You wanna go in through the roof or something?” Amato said.
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “One of them Sunday night jobs. The back wall or something like that. Two guys that knew where everything was, and I figure, somebody went down there once and just made a little map, that’d be enough to go in on. You know what you’re gonna have to do when you get in there. All you got to know is where it is.”
“You’d have to get a guy, knew bells and stuff,” Amato said. “Doglover know anything about bells?”
“I wasn’t thinking about Russell,” Frankie said. “If I was gonna go in when it’s open again, I’d get Russell. But anyway, Russell took off. Him and the guy he’s stealing the dogs with. I dunno if he’s gonna be back and if he was, he probably wouldn’t want to do it. He’s gonna deal.”
“What’s he got?” Amato said.
“I didn’t really ask him,” Frankie said. “Coke, I think.”
“He’s gonna make a million bucks off of that,” Amato said.
“He might,” Frankie said, “and he might just get himself grabbed about six minutes after he starts and then do twenty more. That stuff’s dangerous. There isn’t anything around, you know? Everybody’s hunting around and half of them’re narcs. I heard a couple guys, they got sixty thousand hits of meth off a terminal down in Pawtucket, and they come back up, these’re tough guys, and about ten freaks ripped them off. The cops’ve got bigger hard-ons for that’n they got for fuckin’ coons with fuckin’ guns, for Christ sake. Russell’s got balls, but he didn’t ask me and I don’t think this guy he’s working the dogs with, I don’t think he’s in it with him. I don’t think anybody’s in it with him, which is no way to be if you’re gonna do something like that. No, I was thinking, Dean, my brother-in-law. When he was in the service he was Electronics SP, and he still fools around with that stuff all the time.”
“Alarms?” Amato said. “I thought the guy works in a gas station.”
“He does,” Frankie said. “No, but he built one of them quadraphonic things from a kit on the table in the kitchen, and he was telling me, well, when he saw my car? ‘Now if I was to get that, if I ever got myself a few extra bucks,’ he tells me, he’d build his own color television. It’s all the same thing, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just circuits and stuff, and he knows about that.”
“You think he’d go for it?” Amato said.
“I won’t know till I ask him,” Frankie said. “See, I wanted, talk to you, first, see what you thought about it. I can’t lay the place out like you can. I’m all right going in, but I got to have the map in front of me. I don’t notice things like you do. So, I wanted, talk to you, first. Before I see him. I think he will, though, yeah.”
“He ever do anything before?” Amato said.
“I think he did favors for a couple guys that bought cars,” Frankie said. “And he told me, mine needs a tune-up or something, he’ll do it for me and the parts aren’t gonna cost me anything. He’s hurtin’ for dough.”
“Has it got to be Taunton?” Amato said.
“Shit, no,” Frankie said. “I just said that, account of the way everybody’s so interested in what we do around here. I haven’t got no particular one in mind. What I want, I want the easiest one around to get into, probably one of those new ones that they made outa plastic or something, and that’s got some money in it, and maybe some other things around it so you’re not bare-ass to the world when you’re doing it.”
“I took Connie the movies the other night,” Amato said. “Some fuckin’ thing, and it’s over in Brockton there, in this shopping plaza they got. It’s, I dunno what the name of it is. One story.”
“How about,” Frankie said, “take a look at it, and I’ll go drive past it too, and then if it looks good we can start thinking about it.”
“Yeah,” Amato said. “Yeah, I’m beginning to like this, you know? It’s funny about a thing, like that last thing, there, you can tell right off, if it feels right.”
“HE’S AN ASSHOLE,” Cogan said. He sat in the silver Toronado. It was parked in the MBTA lot behind Cronin’s in Cambridge. “The way he’s an asshole, he’s a gambler. He thinks he’s a gambler, at least. What he really is is a jerk. He don’t gamble, he bets on everything. Jerk of the year.”
“I enjoy going to the track now and then myself,” the driver said. “I haven’t missed an opening at Lincoln in years.”
“So do I,” Cogan said. “I still do. Even though, every time I go down the track, I lose.”
“I don’t,” the driver said. “Of course I don’t bet very much, but I’ve won three or four hundred dollars in an afternoon, and I very seldom lose more than twenty or thirty dollars. And I have a good time.”
“It is a good time,” Cogan said. “It doesn’t pay as good as writing the stuff down, but it’s fun. I go, it’s because there’s other guys that’re going. It’s a nice thing to do, get some fresh air and see some people and maybe you even win. You lose? So what.
“Squirrel,” Cogan said, “Squirrel don’t do that. He never goes down the track, he never goes to any of the games or anything, he just bets on things. And he doesn’t bet because he heard about something and he’s interested in that and he thinks he’s got something. He bets because he’s gotta be down on something all the time, it’s like he’s not gonna be able to live if he’s not. He thinks he’s gonna win, when he bets, he’s always gonna win.”
“Some people do win,” the driver said.
“I know people that win,” Cogan said. “Some of them, get a little something in the horse and they win. Some other guys get something into all the other horses, and they win. And some guys, spent their whole lives doping horses, one or two of them, maybe there’s three, I dunno, they win. Except when the other guys’re getting to the animals and winning. Then they lose. And they take it in stride. Write it off. Not Squirrel. He loses today, he spent the whole morning onna phone, he’s gonna be back onna phone tomorrow, and he’s gonna lose again. So pretty soon he’s got to go out and ge
t some dough some place, and then something like this happens. You know Mitch?”
“Offhand,” the driver said, “no. Never heard of a Mitch.”
“Mitch’s all right,” Cogan said. “He’s a guy I know. Now, you take Mitch, he’s a real gentleman. I’ve seen Mitch drop a grand on one race. And Mitch, he’s about, oh, I dunno, he’s in his fifties. Him and Dillon used to hang around together a lot. When I met Mitch, I was with Dillon. And Mitch, he does all right, but he hasn’t got any more dough’n the next guy. He’s from New York. So, then he goes and he bets another thousand on the next race. And I’ve seen him, he’ll lose that and he’ll maybe even double up on the next one and lose that one, too. Mitch’ll drop a lot of dough. But it’s something he likes to do. And the day’s over, you wanna go out, you couldn’t find yourself a nicer guy’n Mitch to go out with. And he runs out of dough, okay, that’s it, he goes home. Nobody’s got to worry about Mitch. And you won’t see him playing again until next year.
“I was down to Florida there, last winter? Going again this year. Hialeah. Mitch’s in town, he’s staying over to that place that the two guys had that just got hooked with Lansky there. I see Mitch at the track. I ask him, what’s good. And he’s got a few things, he tells me: ‘You know me, now, Jackie. Wasn’t for me, some guy’d have to invent losers, the tracks’d go out of business.’ He knows everybody, the jocks, the hot-walkers, everybody. They all tell him. ‘They all talk to me,’ he says, ‘and I listen to them, and I always take their advice and I always go home losers. I’m a lousy horse-player, is all. You can have what I got if you want it. I ever get cancer, call me up and I’ll give you some of that, too, and you’re such a jerk you’ll probably take it.’ I take what he’s got. We lose. We go out that night, is he pissed? Not Mitch. He’s just a great guy, is all. ‘I been doing this a long time,’ he tells me. It’s not like when I went out, I didn’t know what’s gonna happen to me.’
“The Squirrel,” Cogan said, “he can’t do that. He loses and everything he loses, he can’t afford to lose, and he gets all edgy. He gets nervous. He starts walking around. He’s gonna do that, he’s gonna do the other thing. You know what he did? When he was inna can, he had his wife, she was making his bets for him. I heard that. And the exhibition games, the Broons? Orr’s got the bad knee, they let Cheevers right out the door, nobody even tried to stop him, everybody’s coasting anyway, nobody cares about those games, they’re all out of shape and everything, he was betting them. He’s got a good business. I asked Dillon, Dillon thinks the guy’s good for at least twenty, thirty a year on that business, there’s always gonna be kids coming along that want to drive. And it’s not enough for him. He’s an asshole.”
“Can’t live on thirty thousand,” the driver said.
“My friend,” Cogan said, “Squirrel couldn’t live on ten million. If he got it, he’d lose it.”
“Well,” the driver said, “it’s too bad he had to lose at the card game.”
“He didn’t,” Cogan said. “He won there. He was only there twice. He had any sense, he should’ve kept going back there. He was the only guy in the place that could come close to knowing anything. The guys he was playing against’re bigger shits’n he is. He actually won, the two times he was there, about a thousand, eight hundred or so both times. Which of course for the Squirrel’s not even carfare.
“A guy I know,” Cogan said, “told me, Johnny Amato dropped eight thousand last week alone. Basketball. Kept missing the spread. ‘I love the guy,’ he tells me. ‘He thinks when you lose, it’s not because you bet stupid, you probably shouldn’t’ve got down at all. He thinks it’s luck. His is just bad. That guy, he couldn’t lay off of the sun coming up tomorrow, somebody was to give him a line on it, not happening.’ That time he was in the can, you know he just got out the can, practically?”
“What’d he do?” the driver said.
“Robbed a bank,” Cogan said. “It was the same thing. He robbed the same bank twice. Actually got away with it once. And then he did it again. He was too far inna shit for the first time to get him out. Hadda go back and do it again, get some more dough to piss away. Got himself this bunch of ham-and-eggers and he sends them down where he does his business and he goes away. He goes down the Bahamas. They got his cars and the guns and everything, and they do it, only, of course, they’re as dumb as he is, they miss about sixty and get out with no more’n thirty and he comes home. He got about five, he had so many guys in it with him, they cut it up, and anyway he got in worse shit while he was gone than he was in when he left because he dropped close to seven while he was away. Casinos’re not enough for him, he was also calling home and making stupid bets on games any dumb kid’d know enough to give a leaving-alone.
“So he sets it up again,” Cogan said, “and those dummies go back in, the people in the bank’re starting to think they’re gonna be regular customers or something. So they’re about three minutes out of the box, you ever hear of the Doctor? Eddie Mattie?”
“Yes,” the driver said, “as a matter of fact, I have.”
“Okay,” Cogan said, “Mattie’s one of them. Now there’s only one thing wrong with Mattie, which a guy might expect, he’s got to have Squirrel think up things for him to do, and that’s that he’s fuckin’-A-number-one stupid. So he robbed a bank, right? And he’s in a school zone or something, is he being very careful and everything? Not him. He’s doing close to ninety and they got this lady cop there that’s kind of against that, and she waves him down. And the dumb shit stopped. She hasn’t got no cruiser, she hasn’t got no gun, he’s got this car if they find it the only thing they’re gonna find out’s that it got clouted in Plymouth about three days or so before, and he stopped. ‘License, registration?’ He’s practically gargling. So naturally the crossing guard gets herself a run in her stocking or something and about eight real cops and they take him in and there’s the gun and the dough in the trunk, and he decides, he’s gonna save himself. And he blabs and he blabs and he blabs. And the Squirrel’s onna plane, coming home, funny thing, they had the FBI here, waiting for him, he gets off, got a nice warrant and some handcuffs. So the Squirrel and them did eight or ten. I think they should’ve done more, myself.”
“What’d the Doctor do?” the driver said.
“Three to five,” Cogan said. “He was as pissed off as they were. Thought he was gonna get the street, for tipping them in.”
“Good deal for the Doctor,” the driver said. “He must’ve gotten out some time ago, then.”
“Three or four years ago, I guess,” Cogan said.
“He wasn’t in on this,” the driver said.
“No,” Cogan said.
“You’re sure of that,” the driver said.
“I’m pretty sure, yeah,” Cogan said.
“Because he asked me to ask you about that,” the driver said.
“You can tell him, I’m very sure,” Cogan said.
“Because he never okayed anything on the Doctor,” the driver said.
“Is that so?” Cogan said.
“That’s so,” the driver said. “Told me that himself, when he asked me to ask you.”
“Of course some times,” Cogan said, “a guy’ll get a guy, and the guy’ll think, the man wants it. The guy hasn’t got no way of checking, you know. You just assume that.”
“I understand,” the driver said. “This was merely something I wanted to suggest, that he wanted me to suggest. Mattie having worked with people and all. Just a question.”
“Of course everybody’s got his own way of doing business,” Cogan said.
“Of course,” the driver said.
“Now, aside from the Squirrel,” Cogan said, “we got the two kids. One of them’s a guy that Squirrel had on the bank robberies. That one I’m sure of. The other one, I’m picking up some stuff on him, I think, but I’m not sure yet. The guy I’m talking to, he swears it’s this particular kid, but I don’t know.”
“What’s the problem?” the driver said.
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“The guy’s the problem,” Cogan said. “The guy I’m talking to. Dillon give me a couple names and I saw them and they’re all-right guys but they don’t know shit from Shinola about this thing. This guy I got on my own. But I don’t know about him. He’s close to sixty, at least, and I bet he didn’t put in more’n twenty years all told on the street. Every time he did something he got nailed. So he’s not very bright to begin with and now he’s crazy, and I don’t know about the guy, is all. I do know he’s queer. He’s had everything up his ass. If they’re still making Packards he’d have a Packard up his ass. He’s soft. You never know whether he’s telling you something that happened or he’s telling you something he probably dreamed was happening while nine guys’re taking turns with him. I don’t blame him. He’s as soft as a sneaker fulla shit and he can’t help it. But you got to think about what he tells you.”
“What’s he tell you?” the driver said.
“There’s this other kid,” Cogan said, “this kid he knows, he knows him from the can. He probably used to blow him. He says the kid’s a filthy rotten bastard, but the poor guy’s scared of shadows and he’d blow dead cats if a tough kid said to, and he wants this guy, get some stuff for him. It’s, he says he can get stuff like that, that you mix with the shit you’re selling, and the kid asked him. Only the guy says the kid, he wanted the stuff, it’s some kind of stuff dentists use, right? Makes your mouth cold.”
“Novocaine,” the driver said.
“That’s what I keep thinking it is,” Cogan said. “It’s not. He told me what it is, but I can’t remember. Anyway, it don’t matter, it’s like that, and the kid said he’s gonna need about two pounds of the stuff. Now he wants four. So the guy tells me. Which means, if the guy’s got it right, the kid’s coming in with twice as much junk as he was gonna.”
“And that means he’s got twice as much money to buy dope with,” the driver said.
“Right,” Cogan said. “And, well, that’s really all it means. I got no way of knowing, where the kid gets the dough. I’m trying to find that out. I’m also trying, find the kid. I haven’t even got his whole name. This guy, ah, you can’t depend on him. Either way. You can’t depend on him to give you the straight shit and you can’t depend on him to blow smoke up your ass. It’s just a fuckin’ thing, is all, and I dunno what I’m gonna end up doing about it.
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