At End of Day

by George V. Higgins

  “I don’t buy it. Stealin’ from dead people—my mind this is not a thing takes balls. Diggin’ up their tombs and cemeteries, takin’ all their pots and pans, and coins. Statues of their gods, and dogs and cats and so forth, plates and jewelry and stuff their families buried with them three thousand years ago, so they’d go to the promised land.” He laughed. “Didn’t have Las Vegas then.

  “But this guy with our money, up to his elbows in one sick-oh operation, and for us he’s got an attitude? Ninety that we loaned him was a fuckin’ contribution? I mean, give me a fuckin’ break.”

  Cistaro laughed. “But I go easy on him. I get his attention and explain things, all right? So when I leave there I am pretty sure he now understands. He does—when I go back this afternon, he has got the dough for me and don’t give me no further shit. Think it’s gonna be okay now.

  “Then I go the Terrace, lunch—hafta deal with Albie Bryson. You wanna know something? I don’t like that fuckin’ guy. Here he is, he’s comin’ to us, paying us for peace and quiet, Local Eight, all right? Because it’s cheaper for him if he pays us five grand and we give Ernie Warner two, one for him and one for Bev, and tell him never mind if some his people go the shows and see along with not too many Local Eight guys there’s a lotta scab help, too. Albie’s always whinin’; that’s what I don’t like. How he’s giving gigs to old-time acts, starvin’ without him, and the only thing that keeps it going is cheap towns that underwrite it. And they’re always threatenin’ him—‘Taxpayers’re complainin’, this’s prolly the last year, and …’ I get sick of it, you know? Who the fuck’s he kiddin’ here? He acts like when we make him pay, the fuckin’ money’s comin’ outta Little Sisters of the Poor—when you and I both know, without even askin’, he’s givin’ the same line of shit to the towns, and the acts, and a few guys in Local Eight. He’s keepin’ most of it.

  “All just a load of shit. He’s beatin’ every one of us out of diddly spare change, and that’s why we let it go. That’s the genius of the scumbag; how he gets away with it. Same old fuckin’ story. Steal a million bucks off one guy and you’ll really piss him off—prolly hunt you down and kill you. Steal a buck off every one of a million people? None of ’em’ll even notice. We all just stand around, you know? Playin’ with ourselves. ‘Ah fah Chrissake let it go.’ It’s like what he’s doin’ is, he’s sneakin’ inna back at night and goin’ through the trash. Deposit cans and bottles.

  “But it isn’t, when you think about it. He gets finished cheatin’ all of us, then it all adds up, nice big piece of change for Albie. Albie Bryson’s shit and I don’t like dealing with him.”

  “As long as we keep Ernie, we gotta,” McKeach said. “Ernie come to us after Brian G. went down.” He kept the Pontiac inconspicuously steady at forty-four mph in the right lane, one-and-a-half car lengths behind the car ahead, allowing left-lane traffic to slide by at over fifty. “He asked were we takin’ over everything that Brian had, and did we want the local. If we did he’d stay with us. We could’ve said ‘No, go with Carlo and report to Providence,’ but we talked, you and me did, and we decided, ‘No. Give a piece of steady business to those Ginzo bastards, after which they’ll only want something more, another piece of something else, in our territory?’ And we decided we’d keep it.”

  He spoke slowly, in a calm and moderate tone, his voice slightly guttural. “I still think it was the right decision. Every one thing that we’ve got feeds off all the others, and the others feed off it. So the more things you got going, the stronger I think it makes you—so the more things you can get. Ernie’s been good business for us, and he’s a loyal bastard. He don’t give us any trouble—an’ he gives us a lot of leverage into places which without him we’d never get. Not just the movies and the stage shows—also sports and big conventions. Like political campaigns and fundraisers and stuff.”

  “We never did anything, that political bullshit,” Cistaro said.

  “No, but if we wanted to,” McKeach said. “That’s what I am saying. If we ever decided that for some reason, we did. Like if they ever got a national convention—Democratic Convention, Republican Convention, wouldn’t make no difference—come to the Fleet Center. Say Ernie for some reason—like, we asked him to—didn’t feel right about it, that particular week, and decided, shut it down, or even only put it off a week or so, ’til someone made him feel better. He could probably do it.

  “ ‘Ernie,’ we would say to him, if we ever did decide that we could make a dollar off it, ‘this national convention thing—we’d like it if it didn’t happen. All the Local Eight guys get bellyaches or something, and you decided best thing’d be, call it off. At least ’til you all feel a little better.’

  “I’d make book on this—Ernie would then say right off, ‘My stomach doesn’t feel so good. Probably some kind of bug, some germ that’s goin’ round. I think I’ll go lie down. Oh, and I don’t want no kinda noise and big excitement goin’ on around this town, I’m restin’. Like any of those big-time convention guys’re always makin’ all the time—none of that shit, right? Just upset my stomach more.

  “ ‘All our guys in Local Eight—check on how their stomachs feel. Make sure they ask the other guys that they might know—like the Teamsters, Electricians, Carpenters, the Hotel an’ Restaurant Workers—how their bellies feel. You know what I’m trynah tell yez? Just shut downah fuckin’ town.’ ”

  McKeach paused for several beats. “If we ever went to Ernie, really needing something done, and it was a thing that he could do, then he wouldn’t ask no questions—he would fuckin’ get it done. That’s the kind of friend to have. So what I say is if we hafta deal with Albie once or twice a year to keep Ernie and the local on our side and backin’ us, very handy inna pinch, then that is what we hafta do, and I say that we do it. Deal with Albie, pig he is, and keep our big mouths fuckin’ shut.”

  The Pontiac was quiet for an old car. For a while the only sound inside it was the rushing wind noise generated outside by the protruding rain gutters, glass moldings, and chrome trim parts attached to automobiles manufactured before aerodynamics rounded all exterior surfaces.

  Cistaro cleared his throat. “Then after him was Jinks,” he said. “He was smellin’ around again today, too, I was over Strawson’s with him, tryin’ to talk business with him, and you think that I can do it? Nooo; he’s still tryin’ to find out do I maybe know any more’n he does about how Jerry Mutt went down. How long ago is that now? Gotta be two years, he’s chewin’ on that bone. Fuckin’ Jinks—thinks he’s so fuckin’ cute—he doesn’t watch his fuckin’ ass, pretty soon he’ll be able tah talk to Satchie about Jerry. Talk to Satchie every day, inna dinin’ hall and gym, walkin’ the exercise yard.” He laughed. “Maybe sign up some college courses, huh? Read stories to each other. ‘Once upon a time in Boston, there’re these two fuckin’ assholes who thought they were very smart.’ Even wind up the same cellblock.” He laughed again.

  McKeach did not say anything.

  “Anyway, Albie and Jinks—two of them in the same day, on top the other asshole that I had tah see this morning—got me thinking, you know? Fuckin’ Jerry Mutt again. How we didn’t take it far enough, dealing with that bastard—what we should’ve done was clip ’im. Jinks and Albie, back to back. Didn’t have either one of them to worry about before Jerry went away. Now we got ’em both.

  “Jinks I’ll give you—him we have to put up with, at least for a while. Jinks’s major money and if he ever gets it done, what we’ve got him fronted for, he’ll be worth the aggravation. But fuckin’ Albie—we could hang onto Local Eight without him, I would bet. Ernie’d be glad to lose him, if you offered him the chance. He must know the same thing we do, what a little shit he is. Albie, fuckin’ Albie—just another one those rinky-dinks we never should’ve taken on—not inna million fuckin’ years. Just another one Jerry’s chicken-shit, piss-pot, dog-ass operations that was a big part of the reason why it was ’at you and me and everybody else we know was all in favor, didn’t she
d a fuckin’ tear, when the first guy who suggested it—I forget now who it was—said he wouldn’t mind a fuckin’ bit if fuckin’ Jerry made some history.”

  “It was you,” McKeach said. The light was red at the Walnut Street intersecton and he pulled up in the long line of cars in the right lane well east of it. Next to the Pontiac in the left lane in a white Chevrolet Malibu sedan a middle-aged dark-haired woman in the passenger seat was using the visor vanity mirror to apply lipstick. McKeach watched her idly, mimicking her manner of stretching her lips over her teeth without seeming to be aware that he was doing it.

  “What was me?” Cistaro said.

  “It was you, and you gave him to Farrier,” McKeach said absently, now observing the woman intently. Then he collected himself and shifted his gaze to Cistaro. “You’re the first guy that said Jerry Mutt should go, and if we didn’t want to clip him we should then give his name to someone who could do something about him. I remember it. I dunno what he did that day to piss you off, but that night you had a hair across your ass. You said, ‘Because he is a shitbum rat, and those guys never change. If we don’t get rid of him then someday some cop’ll nail him, ’cause he isn’t like we are, you know—he isn’t very smart.” ’

  The car ahead moved forward about two car lengths and stopped again, and McKeach closed the gap. “ ‘And because of that,’ you said, ‘when he does get nailed he’ll panic. Which he will, get nailed, sooner or later, for some nickel-dime thing, and he won’t just keep his big mouth shut and do maybe, what, a year? No, he’ll think he’s one the big boys; if he’s nailed the whole world’s ended and he has to make a deal. But not just any deal, like where he’d get two or three, nooo; Jerry’s delicate, and that means he can’t do time—Jerry has to walk. So you know what he’ll do—he’ll sell us all, one at a time, ’til he gets a deal he likes.’

  “You would not let go of it. ‘Cops aren’t stupid, you know—you give ’em half a chance, they take it. Jerry thinks he’s smart—he isn’t. They’re much smarter’n he is and they won’t give him what he’s after until they get all he’s got—which if we keep playin’ games with him, gettin’ tied up in his deals—so he’s got loads of shit he can tell them that he knows we did, because he helped us do it—will be every one of us.’

  “You couldn’t’ve forgotten,” McKeach said. He slapped the wheel with his left hand. “You can’t possibly’ve forgotten, even this much later on, all the stuff you said. You made a fuckin’ speech. Maxie triedah argue with you. Said well, gee, he didn’t think so, Jerry seemed like a nice guy to him, small-time, maybe, not in our league, but still, an okay guy.

  “And you said, ‘No-no, he isn’t. What he is’s a disaster lookin’ for a place to happen. And you know what he’ll get, tradin’ you an’ me, and all the rest of us? As many as it takes? Witness Protection. Bank on it—all of us’ll be goin’ to jail, one by one, and he’ll be inna safe house onna Cape somewhere, eatin’ steak and havin’ beers, he gets through testifyin’, puttin’ all of us inside. Then a new life in Australia for him, fuckin’ fuckin’ kangaroos. That’s what you’ll be worth to him, and as soon as someone offers it, your life outside is over.’ ”

  “Well, if I did say that I was right,” Cistaro said. “And that’s why I gave him to Farrier. Because Jerry did have a lotta scumbag little nickel-dime deals going on, all at the same time, and sooner-later I know he’s bound to lose track of them, how one of them was gonna get himself grabbed by some kid Statie two weeks outta the academy. And if it was the Staties got him, or the first fed with a clear shot who wasn’t FBI, you and me’d be going too. We wouldn’t be protected.

  “This’s a very nice little arrangement you and me’ve got, but it’s only good as long’s we make sure if something happens might affect us, it’s Farrier and them in charge of doing it. So that it doesn’t.”

  The light changed and McKeach moved the Pontiac forward, accelerating back up to speed.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Cistaro said. “I had stuff I hadda do and I got it done. You find that Junior kid you said you hadda go and see? That who sprayed on you? What is this kid anyway, some kinda fuckin’ skunk?”

  McKeach chuckled. “Well, I don’t think he meant to,” he said. “Mess me up, I mean. Things just got so they looked to me they might be gettin’ outta hand. And of course you don’t want that, so I thought I’d better do something, and I did. That’s the long and short of it—I wasn’t really prepared. Must be getting old. That’s how you tell, they say. Start overlooking small things, then fall down an’ break your hip. I thought I was ready, but I really wasn’t, and so as usual, that kind of situation, I hadda do a thing I didn’t think I’d hafta do.”

  MCKEACH AND WALTERS SAT ON TWO wooden packing cases stenciled WHEELERS in faded red paint, face to face across the fourth in the row of a dozen unpainted wooden work tables bolted to the floor opposite the pedestrian entrance about thirty feet from the southerly end of the workbay of the warehouse. Wheelers men had used the tables—eight feet long by three feet wide, the legs and crossbraces made of two-by-fours carriage-bolted together, the tops of eight-ply composition wood—to crate household and office goods for long-distance shipment, leaving them behind in the stillness of the Wheelers bankruptcy like implements of a ritual that had failed. In the late afternoon there was barely enough pale winter sunlight to illuminate the long windows under the eastern eaves twenty feet above the two men at the table. The golden light that picked up trace lanolin in the pores of their skin and made their faces gleam—the right side of Walters’ burnished brown, like a polished mahogany surface, the left side of McKeach’s glowing russet, burned by wind and sun and whiskey—was the output of the double-mantle Coleman gasoline lantern near the end of the table to Walters’ right. Now and then one of his men shifted his position in the shadows, his shoes making soft scraping sounds.

  “Junior, you and me,” McKeach said, his elbows and forearms in the black suede leather sleeves of his tanker jacket resting on the table, hands dangling out of sight below the edge, “I got to say that I don’t like the way things seem to be startin’ off between us here, you sayin’ to me ‘Sure, come over,’ like you don’t know what’s goin’ on, or who the hell I am and so forth. And now me comin’ here in friendship, set to do a man a favor, and findin’ myself in this.” He nodded toward the shadows behind and around Walters where he knew at least three other black men clad entirely in black clothes stood as still as possible when he conducted business—knowing far more precisely their positions and postures of uneasiness than he believed that Walters realized. “This, ah, kind of a situation, here.”

  “Junius,” Walters said, regret in the lines around his eyes. He kept the alto voice low and pleasant, being gracious, forgiving McKeach while correcting him, as though meaning to soothe him; at the same time he smiled the universal minimal smile, upper lip raised only slightly above the four upper teeth he showed in front. His eyes were dead. “ ‘Junius’ to you, Arthur, if we already know each other so well that we’re going by first names. ‘Junius’ is mine. White people do sometimes find it an unusual name, and I don’t insist they use it. But if that’s what they want, well then, I think, no matter how pec-cu-u-lar it sounds to you, you ought to get it right.”

  The man in the gloom to Walters’ right coughed and led the others murmuring quiet amens and endorsements—the man behind and to his left stirred audibly—then the one in the center sighed further approval. Walters smiled a little more. He used an undertone of teasing. “Now whatchou doin’ with them hands of yours, you got where I can’t see ’em—you playin’ with yourself there, man? Gettin’ nervous on me here?” He shook his head. “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” doing the fussy aunty on McKeach, “no need for that here—you be the big lion, we jus’ the lambs; we have to be … your friends.”

  McKeach did not change the position of his forearms or his torso. Below the edge of the table he clasped the fingers of his right hand back against the palm. He inserted his little finger into
the loop of the leather lanyard he had snugged against the inside of his wrist and began to pull it down. “I’m comfortable,” he said. “Maybe if I tell you why I’m here … so there won’t be no misunderstanding.”

  He had entered the warehouse by climbing the four wooden steps leading up to the battleship-grey steel door black-stenciled EMPLOYEES ONLY at the back, using his left hand to remove the Ray-Bans and his right to turn the knob and pull the door open, and then, once inside, give the door a yank before releasing it to boom shut behind him. While his eyes adjusted to the dim interior he had pushed the Cubs hat back on his forehead and unzipped the black suede tanker jacket, moving his shoulders and sucking his belly in, passing his hands around inside his belt, tucking his shirttails deeper into his jeans, palming the sap out of the place where it lived in the hollow at his waistband over his right kidney. It was second nature to him now, after all the years, gathering his fingers together and inserting his hand through the supple nine-inch looped lanyard he had fashioned six years before, cutting the cobbler’s-grade oiled cowhide stock from the pattern he had made by slitting the stitching of the one Brian G. had shown him how to make, modifying it to make the lanyard an inch longer.

  “More whip,” he explained proudly to Cistaro, showing it the day after he made it. He had also added an inch to the pouch, to accommodate more BB shot—another ounce or so, he figured. “More wallop, take some of the doubt out of it.” He had never actually weighed the old bludgeon and he hadn’t put the new one on a scale either, but he liked it even better—“Better heft—ten ounces or so.” He slipped the pouch up under the black knitted wristlet of his jacket so that it lay against the underside of his right forearm, the lanyard looped around his wrist against the base of his thumb.

  “You been here five weeks now,” McKeach said. “Brought in six truckloads so far you put under the floor here, and while the trucks’re still comin’ in you took some of it out, cut it and repacked it, and shipped four trucks out again. Two of them were for Detroit. Don’t know where the other two went, yet—by tomorrow night I will.