Cogan's Trade

by George V. Higgins

  “Now this other kid,” Cogan said, “him I know. He was on the jobs that the Squirrel and him went in for, and he got out about the same time, and I heard it and I sent down to China and, what about this kid, could it be him? And China said: ‘Certainly could be.’ So, him I’m sure of. All we got to do now, we got to think about that other kid. He bothers me.”

  “Should we move now?” the driver said. “Or, do you want to wait.”

  “I talked to Dillon about that,” Cogan said. “Him and me, we both think: now. Games’re closed, right?”

  “Grant’s Tomb,” the driver said.

  “People’re losing money,” Cogan said.

  “A fair inference,” the driver said.

  “They don’t like losing money,” Cogan said.

  “Except for Testa,” the driver said. “He’s still open.”

  “So what we oughta do,” Cogan said, “and me and Dillon both think this, you think about it and it’s the only thing to do. We oughta hit Trattman now and get things started so people can get back to doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

  “Trattman?” the driver said. “What brings Trattman into this? You told me yourself, it’s this Amato fellow and his friends.”

  “It is,” Cogan said. “Trattman didn’t have anything to do with it. This stuff I’m getting, plus I had Trattman talked to, you’re right. I had him asked and I’m sure.”

  “You ought to be,” the driver said. “Your boys went a little bit overboard there. They damn near killed the man.”

  “When I talked to Steve,” Cogan said, “I didn’t know that. When I talked to you. All he told me was they worked him over and he said he didn’t know anything. That’s all I knew.”

  “I had one hell of a time understanding him,” the driver said. “The first time he called, I was out. My secretary talked to him. She didn’t get more’n a third of what he said. I had to call him back and I had trouble understanding him. Hell, I had trouble, calling him back. The numbers he left, she couldn’t understand what he was saying. I finally figured it out. It had to be Trattman. Cangelisi called me, all upset, and said Trattman called him and he gave me to Trattman, gave him my number. ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I didn’t sic those monkeys on him. If you didn’t, you know who did. You take care of him.’ Then when I finally reached him, I understood why the kid had trouble. He’s got a broken jaw.”

  “I heard that,” Cogan said.

  “He’s also got broken ribs and a broken nose and he got three or four teeth broken and there’s something wrong with his septum,” the driver said. “And he told me, there was some question about his spleen. He was in the hospital when I talked to him.”

  “I heard some of that,” Cogan said. “He’s out now, I understand.”

  “Must be his spleen’s all right then,” the driver said. “He’s not happy, though.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Cogan said. “We aim to please.”

  “He’ll be sorry to hear it too,” the driver said. “When I tell him. I have to tell him.”

  “Tell him anything you want,” Cogan said. “You’re his lawyer and all.”

  “Trattman blames him,” the driver said. “I didn’t tell Trattman anything, of course, but you and I both know, you weren’t authorized to go that far.”

  “You know how guys are,” Cogan said. “They go out to do something and they get all excited and everything. When I found out, I called Steve. He said Barry, Barry, look, Barry’s an ironworker, all right? He’s a very tough guy. All of them guys carry, for Christ sake. They’re always falling off something or getting into fights and stuff. He’s a tough guy. That’s why I use him. And Steve said, well, apparently they’re about halfway along and things’re going all right, and then Barry decided, Barry’s very nutty about his wife. You can’t talk to the guy about her. I dunno what she is, she’s an angel or something. At least he says so. So, things’re going along, Steve said, and Barry decides Trattman fucked his wife. She was staying some place with her mother, Barry’s up in Maine on some kind of a beef, and I dunno how the hell it got started, Steve don’t know either. But Barry gets this idea in his head, Trattman fucked his wife, and that’s when the guy got his jaw broken and the ribs. Barry kicked him. ‘I oughta bitch too,’ Steve said to me, ‘I was standing too close to him and the cocksucker threw his cookies on my pants.’ I told him, go fuck himself.”

  “Is that what I’m supposed to tell him?” the driver said. “I was very specific when I talked to you. He told me to be. Shove him around if you want, but don’t hurt him too badly. I told you he didn’t want him hurt.”

  “Ah, come on,” Cogan said, “of course you did.”

  “All right,” the driver said.

  “You guys always do that,” Cogan said. “I know that. You guys, you don’t know how to break an egg. You want things done all right, you know what you want and the guys to go get it, and you take what you get because that’s what you wanted, but you always go out after and you say, you didn’t want nobody, do that. Quit shittin’ me, all right? They know, they know who Steve is. They know what him and Barry do. Shit, I mean, they’re guys that’ve always been around. When Jimmy the Fox, there, he started to get all jumpy, I had three hundred locations and there wasn’t nothing left for nice ghinny boys like him, there, he started making a lot of noise and I heard about it, I turned over forty joints to Steve just like that. They all know who Steve is. They know what he does. He don’t know anything. He’s just a good guy to have around, and all the guys’ve used him.”

  “The thing of it is,” the driver said, “he didn’t okay it.”

  “He okayed it,” Cogan said. “I told you who I was gonna use. He knows it just as good as I do, Steve’s gonna go out and do what he thinks you want him to do. You tell him what you want, he’s gonna listen, he’s gonna go out and do what he thinks you want. Don’t matter what you say. And, he okayed it, he had you call Dillon and he had you see me. Now cut the shit. It’s not gonna make any difference anyway. We gotta hit Trattman and the man knows it.”

  “I don’t understand that,” the driver said. “I thought you believed him.”

  “My friend,” Cogan said, “I do. It don’t make a bit of difference. Once before, Trattman did something, right? And he was lying. He was blowing smoke up the man’s ass.”

  “Correct,” the driver said.

  “This time,” Cogan said, “this time Trattman didn’t blow no smoke.”

  “And he got beaten up,” the driver said, “very badly beaten up.”

  “But we’re sure, this time,” Cogan said. “This time, last time we thought we were sure and we weren’t. This time we are.”

  “Correct,” the driver said.

  “Now,” Cogan said, “the guys that go to the games, they’re not sure. Well, they are sure. They’re sure Trattman’s got a license, because he can do it and nobody does anything about it. So that’s the same thing. So what do you think they’re gonna do? You think they’re gonna go the games?

  “And never even mind them,” Cogan said, “what about the guys on the street? Whaddaya think they think, huh?”

  “I’ve got no idea,” the driver said.

  “They think,” Cogan said, “they think: Trattman. He did it before and he did it again. And he lied about it before and nobody did nothing, and now he did it again and all he got was beat up.”

  “He could’ve died,” the driver said.

  “Because he stuck out,” Cogan said. “This’s his second time, the way they see it, the second time he did it. The first time you do it and if nobody catches up to you, great. The second time you can do it and somebody whales the shit out of you.”

  “If that’s what they think,” the driver said.

  “Counselor,” Cogan said, “take my word for it: that’s what they think.”

  “Ahhh,” the driver said. “But still, he really didn’t do anything.”

  “It’s his responsibility,” Cogan said. “He di
d it before and he lied before and he fooled everybody, and, I said it to Dillon, I said: ‘They should’ve whacked him out before.’ And Dillon agreed with me. Now it happened again. It’s his responsibility for what guys think. On the street it’s Trattman, nothing but Trattman. Gets fifty, fifty-two thousand, whatever it was, he got about the same, he hadda split something, okay, but he got about the same the last time. And now they break his jaw. He’s hurt and he’s out what the kids cost him and he’s clipped guys that trusted him about eighty thousand, and he’s still walking around and everybody knows he did it.”

  “He didn’t do it,” the driver said. “Not this time, anyway.”

  “That’s not what everybody knows,” Cogan said. “There’s lots of guys that’d drink milkshakes for a year, if they got caught, for that kind of dough, they had their jaws wired shut. Shit, we’re gonna have kids waiting in line, knock them fuckin’ games over, they open up again. You got any idea how many wild-ass junkies there are around? If he gets away with this, well, we might as well just forget it, once and for all, and just quit.”

  “I still don’t know,” the driver said. “I see what you mean, the public angle, and I don’t take issue with what you say about the other people. But I’m not sure how he’s going to feel about this, with a man who didn’t do what everybody thinks he did, when I suggest that.”

  “Tell him,” Cogan said, “ask him, where the guys come from, in the games. Not from the street. They don’t care, Trattman got beat up. They’re not gonna come in, is all. Trattman did it before, Trattman did it again. Trattman’s through, and he can’t do nothing else. Except get laid. He’s good at getting laid. Otherwise he can’t do nothing for us. We lose nothing there.

  “Tell him also,” Cogan said, “the guys onna street. They think the same thing, and they’re gonna take what they think and nobody else’s games’re gonna be safe. He’s hurt. Big deal. You hit a game and it’s big money and the worst they do to you, they beat you up. The kids’ll start their own union. We’re gonna have nothing but guys running around for a while, knocking down doors worse’n cops, and then after a while there’s not gonna be no games, no games at all. ‘Goin’ to a game? Right. Save yourself some time. Go inna room, put your hands up, throw the cash onna bed, you get home early and the wife’s glad and you didn’t take no chances, getting yourself shot.’ Guys’re not gonna go for it, and there’s no two ways about it.

  “Counselor,” Cogan said, “go talk to the man. Trattman’s gotta be hit, and you put it up to the man, he’ll agree with me right off. Give it a try. You don’t do it? Forget about the money. He made a mistake.”

  “A long time ago,” the driver said. “He made a mistake a long time ago.”

  “He made two mistakes,” Cogan said. “The second mistake was making the first mistake, like it always is. That’s all you get, two mistakes. Tell the man.”

  “If he agrees with you,” the driver said, “assuming that. You can hit Trattman?”

  “Yeah,” Cogan said.

  “How about this Amato fellow?” the driver said. “He seems like the leading candidate to me.”

  “He’s right up there,” Cogan said. “Not yet. Wait’ll we do Trattman. It’ll make him easier, we do that. But sooner or later, yeah.”

  “Can you handle?” the driver said.

  “Right now,” Cogan said, “probably not. Not the way things are right now.”

  “Who?” the driver said. “He knows people, of course, but he always wants to know who was suggested by the fellow I talk to.”

  “I got a couple things in mind,” Cogan said. “That one, I got to think about that one, and I got to make sure. Maybe, maybe we’re gonna need Mitch.”

  “He does this kind of thing?” the driver said.

  “Let’s think about Trattman for now,” Cogan said. “Later on, we can start to think about what guys do. But yeah, Mitch’s been at it a long time. One of the best.”

  “IT WAS FUCKIN’ BEAUTIFUL,” Russell said. He sat on the trunk of the GTO and Frankie leaned against a parking meter. The car was parked in front of the Chicken In the Box on Cambridge Street in Boston.

  “We leave inna middle of the night, for Christ sake,” Russell said. “I said to him: Tor Christ sake, Kenny, we’re gonna have to drive inna daytime sooner or later, there’s no way we’re stoppin’ anywhere with what we’re gonna have in there. So why the fuck’re we leaving when we oughta be in bed?’

  “ ‘Well,’ he tells me, ‘see, we gotta do it this way. I wanna get the hell at least onna Jersey Pike before it gets light. Too many fuckin’ cops around here, heard about fuckin’ dogs missing. See a couple guys, earful of dogs, they’re maybe gonna get around to stopping us, see what we got to say.’ But cops other places, they didn’t hear nothing about dogs, nobody told them anything. ‘And besides,’ he says, ‘I did this before. First part of the trip’s really something. So, we start inna dark.’

  “Then he shows up,” Russell said. “See, I couldn’t sleep. He told me: ‘Get yourself six, seven hours in the afternoon, you can. We got about sixteen hundred miles in front of us. Last time, took me almost three days. So it’d really help, you get some sleep, all them dogs inna car and everything.’

  “Okay,” Russell said, “I try it. I get up. I eat. I sit around. I let my fuckin’ dogs out. I let my fuckin’ dogs in. I feed my fuckin’ dogs. That’s another thing he tells me. ‘When’ve you been feeding them dogs? At night, probably.’ I tell him, yeah, just before I go out, the horsemeat and the fuckin’ meal. Keeps them nice and quiet. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says, ‘feed them, lunch instead. Dogs don’t know the difference. I want them dogs have a good shit for themselves, before we get them inna car. Also, now, I want you to give them something, all right?’

  “I thought he means the phenobarb,” Russell said. “Christ, I got myself so much phenobarb I could nod off half the town without doing nothing else. No. Because, see, you dope them just before you load them up, inna car, they all start off with a nice nap. He’s got mineral oil. Four fuckin’ gallons of mineral oil.

  “ ‘Dump this in their fuckin’ food,’ he says. ‘Give ’em fuckin’ all of it. Got any tomato soup? Get about twenny cans tomato soup, mix that up and heat it, right? Just like you’re gonna eat it yourself.’ I tell him, I can’t eat it, it hasn’t got rice in it. ‘Always tomato rice inna slammer, Kenny,’ I say. ‘I gotta put rice in it?’ He doesn’t know anything. The guy’s got absolutely no sense of humor and he never did time. He don’t know anything.”

  “He should’ve,” Frankie said.

  “There’s very few guys,” Russell said, “shouldn’t’ve. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘heat it up and dump the oil in. Then pour it in their food and they’ll woof it down like champs. Otherwise, they won’t. Then, I guarantee it, you make sure them fuckin’ dogs can get out, fast, because that stuff’s gonna come out of them like they’re waxed.’

  “Them dogs,” Russell said, “all I could think of was when guys got dysentery the first time, you know? And they didn’t, they never had nothing like you get there, before that, and they didn’t know what was gonna happen to them. So them dogs, I put that food down, they practically trample each other, get at it, and I let them out and pretty soon they’re all wrinkled up, their faces’re all wrinkled and they’re squatting and squatting. Christ, you could smell that fuckin’ backyard in goddamned Springfield, steam’s coming out of the grass like it’s on fire or something. My mother comes home, she’s about a block away and she starts in on me. ‘Where’re you getting them dogs from? They’ll have the Board of Health down.’ I said: ‘Yeah, Ma. You know what you did? You hurt my feelings. You shouldn’t’ve come down here, you should’ve stayed where you are.’ My only son, he’s in jail, she’s got to come down here so she can be around and visit me. Know how many times she visits me? Three times. Three times in almost three years. Brought me a fuckin’ cake, once. They wouldn’t let her bring it in. ‘Shouldn’t’ve put the file in it, Ma,’ I said, ‘I meant to tell you, M
a, they got the metal detector, there. They can spot the file.’ She tells me: ‘There was nothing in that cake.’ Fine mother she is, I tell her. Shit. I said: ‘Ma, you hurt my feelings. Just for that, I’m gonna take my dogs out of here. I’m gonna take ’em out tonight. But just for that, I’m not cleaning up. I was you, taking the garbage out, I think I’d wanna be careful where I was stepping.’ She looks at me. ‘Figures,’ she says, ‘fits right in with everything else I got from you. Do me a favor, willya? Don’t come back.’ I told her: ‘I take after my old man. I won’t.’

  “Now the next thing I got to do,” Russell said, “I got to get that phenobarb into them dogs. ‘This’s kind of tricky,’ he tells me. ‘You got to take the water away from them by five o’clock, because them dogs, after the oil goes through them they’ll drink it all, and then we’ll fuckin’ drown in dogpiss. The trouble is, the last time I did this we give them the phenobarb about five, before we take the water away from them, and we really gave them a lot, because the time before that we didn’t give them enough and they got inna car and they all hadda nice nap and then it’s a fuckin’ madhouse. So the last time we give them too much and they’re all woozy, we get them to the guy, and we didn’t get nothing for them, the dogs’re sick and all the rest of it. I don’t want no more of that shit. I don’t want them dogs raising hell all the way down and I don’t want them bumping into things, we get down there, either. Give the little ones, half a grain. A grain if they’re lively. The big ones a couple grains, and if they’re, if there’s any of them that’re still jumping round, hit ’em again. With the water. Then take the water back. Take some bread and make it in little balls and stick another half a grain in that and give them it around eleven or so, and that oughta do it.’