by Howie Carr
“You ever get cold feet?” I asked. “I mean, even when you were a kid.”
“Fuck no.”
“Me neither. You either got it or you don’t, that’s the way I see it. You go in by yourself. Unless it’s a bank or an armored car, of course.” I was never actually in the car on any of my armored-car jobs. I just lined ’em up for Bobby Bones; I never went out on the heists myself. The jeopardy was just a little too much. But I did banks, and I almost always used four guys on a job. Three inside and one outside, the driver. Most guys’ll tell you, the best guy to use as the driver is your brother, because if it’s your brother in the car, it cuts down the odds that he’s going to leave you high and dry. There’s nothing worse, coming out of a bank, no car, and all you’ve got in your hand is your dick. Too bad for me, I didn’t have a brother who could back me up. That’s why I used my cousin Gonzo Ronzo whenever possible.
I said to Sally, “You don’t need two guys to take that check-cashing place of yours. Besides, what’s the point of icing one of the clerks but not the other one? There’s no point in icing either of them, because they sure as shit ain’t calling nine-one-one if it’s just a robbery, right? But if you gonna hit one of ’em, don’t you hit the second one too?”
“Bench, I keep telling you, we’re dealing with junkies here. Nothing has to make sense.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “It makes perfect sense—but only if you’re trying to make the news. One guy’s dead, that’s news, two is more news, but if you want to keep the story going, you need a witness who can talk about the shooters in ski masks blah-blah-blah.”
Sally fumbled for a cigar in his overcoat. “What are you driving at?”
“Look,” I said. “This ain’t about starting a gang war between us. That’s not what they’re trying to do.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“—I’ll get to that, but hear me out first. Everything they’ve done is for the news splash. Sally Curto’s nephew gets hit, Bench McCarthy gets clipped on Broadway—that’s what they wanted, and what the fuck was that all about, by the way? Did that make any sense? If they want to take me out it’d be a lot easier to get me with a rifle walking out of the Alibi. Fuck, you’re always telling me I’m becoming a creature of habit, right?”
“What I told you was, that’s how your uncle Buddy got it.” He lit up his stogie and took a long drag. “But that’s ancient history. All I want to know is, who’s behind this, and when are you going to kill them?”
“Sally, I wish it were that easy. If it were, I’d already have taken care of it. Somebody’s using us as pawns.” I was trying to go slow. Sally may not be the swiftest gazelle on the savanna, but if you lay it out, point by point, he gets it. This, however, was above his pay grade, I don’t care where he is on those DOJ LCN charts. I was about to take it to the next level.
“Sally,” I said, “did you read the Globe yesterday?”
“Fuck the Globe. They ruined the city with their fucking busing.”
“Listen to me. Sometimes people use the Globe for their own agendas, you know what I mean?”
His eyes narrowed. “Go ahead.”
I opened my top desk drawer and got the copy of Ted McGee’s column out and pushed it across the desk. He took it in his stubby fingers and slowly lip-read it. After about a minute he looked up at me.
“I never read such a load of shit,” he said, and then he stood up, started pointing at the wall and began yelling. He was going Sally again. This was getting to be a problem. In peacetime, this maybe happened once a month. Now he was folding under the pressure.
“You tell that no-good motherfucker I want him over the Dog House tonight, and I don’t mean no fucking maybes either. And on top of everything else, you misspell my name, you drunken Irish motherfucker.”
He was shaking. He was talking directly to McGee, who needless to say wasn’t there. “You, you rat cocksucker, are you trying to get people killed? What the fuck you think you’re doing? I’ll fuckin’ tear your black heart out, you dirty piece of shit.” Sally took off his porkpie hat and threw it at the wall. I heard a knock on the door; one of my drivers wanted to know if everything was okay. Obviously, this kid hasn’t been around the garage very long. Most of the guys had heard these kinds of rants from Sally at least once or twice. I went to the door and handed the kid a couple of twenties and told him to go buy a round of coffee for the garage.
“Black for me, regular with two sugars for the other guy,” I said, nodding in the direction of Sally, who had quieted down somewhat but was still muttering a steady stream of obscenities in the direction of the wall. Before I could shut the door one of the pit bulls, Atomic Dog, got inside and jumped up on Sally and started sniffing his crotch.
“What the fuck is this?” Sally bellowed, batting Atomic Dog away. “Is this dog queer or what?”
“It’s a female, Sally. She loves you.”
Sally scowled, but when I told him maybe he should take a load off, he reluctantly sat back down. Atomic Dog curled up at his feet. He reached down and stroked her head. Tyson was going to be jealous when he saw this.
“This motherfucker McGee, I got a good mind to drop him where he stands,” he said. “Just hit him in the head. Bap-ba-beep-boop. You understand American?”
“Sally,” I said patiently, “whoever’s paying him to write this shit, clipping the asshole would just be a bonus for them. Guy’d be a hero, he can’t testify that he ever took a payoff. They’d name a scholarship after him at BU.” I shook my head. “No, we gotta play this thing cool.”
Sally took a long drag on his cigar, which was now wet and all bent at the non-lit end. “Are you telling me that somebody’s actually paying him to write this shit?”
“That would be my guess. This guy McGee has been for sale for years. He’s the one who kept writing ‘Whitey kept the drugs out of Southie.’ And I’m also thinking that the same guys who are paying off McGee are paying the people who are trying to kill us.”
Sally leaned forward across my desk. “Why?” he said. “Only place we’re big shots now is in the papers. Why go to all this trouble to take out two guys that ain’t got two nickels to rub together?”
It wasn’t quite that bad, especially for Sally. He was twenty-five years older than me. He’d come up near the end of the golden age of wiseguys, and he got in a few years running the numbers—back when they called it nigger pool—before the Lottery killed off just about every kind of gambling except pro football. Sometimes, after a few drinks, he’d brag about how much dough they used to make, him and the Angiulos. For me, it was more of a struggle. Cripes, I was on the hook to Henry Sheldon for twenty-five large.
“Sally, you notice in that column how McGee isn’t really interested in us getting shot, he’s worried about sinking this casino bill.”
“Fuck casinos—nothing there for us except crumbs. Wish there was something big we could grab but it’s not 1975 anymore. We go in there, try to talk to whoever gives out the licenses, the feds’ll have the office wired. Closed-circuit cameras too. Might as well be on TV. Hell, we probably would be on TV, that same night most likely.”
“You know that, and I know that. But if they can make it seem like we’re having a war for control of casinos, then maybe they can stop them.”
“Who’s ‘they’? I ask you that before, you don’t tell me. Who is ‘they’? I thought everybody was for casinos now.”
“Not everybody, apparently. I’m guessing ‘they’ are the people who don’t have the juice to get the licenses right now. I don’t know exactly, I’m not inside. But don’t you see, Sally,—if all of a sudden a bunch of bodies start piling up, it looks like the wiseguys are fighting it out and this is the future if the state legalizes casinos.”
Sally considered this for a moment. “Didn’t I read somewhere that to get one of them new gaming licenses, you had to post a bond to guarantee to put up a $500 million casino?”
I nodded. “Something like that.”
&nbs
p; He looked around my windowless office, which hadn’t changed since the previous owner opened the garage back in 1957. There was even an old Pep Boys girlie calendar from 1961 that no one had ever bothered to take down.
He smiled. “Does anyone really think either of us got collateral for a half-billion loan from a bank for a casino?”
“That’s my point. If you think this thing through for about ten seconds, you realize it’s bullshit, us fighting over something we couldn’t come near affording, even if we could pass the background checks, which we can’t.”
“Yeah, but my nephew’s just as dead.”
I thought for a second. Then I decided to bounce something off him. That’s not quite the right way to put it. I wasn’t seeking his counsel; I was seeking his consent. He’s the senior partner, even though I do almost all the wet work now, what little there still is, or was, until this week.
“You ever hear of this guy Jack Reilly? Used to be a cop, was a bagman for the old mayor?”
Sally put his cigar in the ashtray on my desk. I could smell it from where I sat.
“How old’s this guy?”
“About my age, a little younger maybe.”
“He hang out in the North End?”
“Fuck if I know, I’m from Somerville.”
Sally scratched his head. “I think maybe I knew his mother, way back when. Lived on Richmond Street, I think. Married an Irish guy, a cop maybe?” His lip curled up a little. “Why you askin’ me about this guy? We got assholes trying to clip us.”
“This guy, he comes around the Alibi the other day, asking questions.”
“Asking questions?” Sally likes strangers asking questions about as much as I do.
“Yeah, he was interested in talking. First I make him for a cop—”
“How many times I gotta tell you, never talk to a cop. I don’t give a fuck, all they wanna do is be able to identify your voice in court. ‘Yes, sir, I know the defendant, I recognize his voice, I talked with him at the Alibi.’”
I’d heard this lecture a million times. Maybe two million.
“Sally, I told you, he ain’t a cop. He almost got indicted, he was shaking down some other cop for a promotion, they got him on tape I think, but he was too cute for ’em.”
“Well, I like that.”
“The other thing is, I know his brother. He’s done some work for me.”
“Capable?”
I shook my head. “Not that kind of guy.”
“Stickups?”
I shook my head again. “Trucks. He’s just a guy hangs around. Marty, Marty Reilly. Not a bad guy. He’s up at Devens right now.”
“So what’d he want, this guy, your friend’s brother?”
“Not sure. We didn’t talk much. I asked him, ‘Do I know you?’”
“Good.”
“Sally, I learn from you.” He placidly accepted the compliment, didn’t even realize I was giving him the needle, gently. Irony has always been in short supply on Hanover Street.
I said, “The more I think about it, though, the more I think he’s on to this too.”
“You mean us getting shot at?”
“I mean casinos. See, he works now for pols at the State House, City Hall, crooked pols mostly.”
“I didn’t know there was any other kind.”
“So I’m figuring, maybe he’s gotta couple ideas, wanted to bounce them off me. I’m thinking maybe—”
“No,” Sally said. “No civilians.”
“Sally, he ain’t exactly a civilian.”
“Plenty guys at the State House almost got indicted, that don’t mean you wanna be sittin’ down with them. Them guys don’t stand up.”
“Who does, Sally? These days, I mean?”
Before he could give me another lecture, there was a rapping on the door. The kid brought in our coffee. We waited until he was gone before resuming our conversation.
“Sally,” I said, “lemme talk to the guy. We’re clay pigeons out here, and we don’t even know who’s using us for target practice.”
Sally frowned. “You ain’t going to pay him, are you?
“Are you shittin’ me? I’m a wiseguy.”
Just then Atomic Dog stood up, looked up at Sally, raised her hind leg and pissed on his pants. Sally closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as he considered this latest indignity. He finally opened his eyes and looked first at Atomic Dog, who had again collapsed in exhaustion on the floor, and then at me.
“I guaran-fucking-tee you,” he said, shaking his wet trouser leg. “What just happened to me never happened to Jerry Angiulo.”
18
LAST CALL AT ANTHONY’S PIER 4
Mister Chairman, Senator Denis Donahue of the Worcester, Franklin and Hampshire district, was having a time at Anthony’s Pier 4. One yard per person, $500 per “sponsor,” and $5,000 per table.
I got my ticket from Kevin Caulfield. As a lobbyist, he can only contribute $250 a year to any politician, as opposed to non-lobbyists. This was another of those marvelous reforms so beloved of the newspaper editorial boards. It saved the lobbyists $250 per hack, although of course if you really needed to duke somebody some cash, there was always some secretary in your office to make up the $250 deficit. And if it was really important … well, that’s what they all had guys like me for. Guys like I used to be, I mean.
Old Man Caulfield wasn’t in a good mood when I stopped by to pick up my ducat. Ted McGee had written another column in the Globe—a “special,” on the front page. The way it was written, it sounded like he’d been there when Sally’s collector got hit. As usual, plenty of dialogue, no last names. At the bottom of the piece, McGee reassumed his omniscient voice and lectured the squares in the suburbs who didn’t know he was making it all up. He told them how this “carnage” would continue as long as the cancer of gambling loomed over Our Fair City, the City on a Hill. Fucking guy grew up in Fitchburg, and all the rubes thought he was a Townie or some such shit.
“He’s killing us,” Caulfield said.
“What’s the head count on the vote?” I asked.
“It’s not coming to the floor, if that’s what you mean.” In other words, leadership no longer had the votes. From the tone of Caulfield’s voice, it wasn’t even close.
“Any way to save the bill?” I asked.
“That’s your job,” he said glumly. I could see he didn’t think I was up to the job, but I didn’t take it personally. Probably no one could pull it out now.
I said, “I went to the game last night.”
“Really?” he said. “Let me guess, it cost you fifty bucks to park and you’re pissed at the mayor.”
“That goes without saying,” I said. “But I thought you might be interested in who was sitting in Donuts’ seats.”
He looked up at me. Now he was interested.
“The Pulitzer Prize winner himself.”
“McGee?”
“None other. And sitting next to him was the commissioner of probation.”
“Drew Amato? That’s Donahue’s guy, his cousin.”
“Really?” I said.
“You didn’t know that? I thought everybody knew that.”
“I don’t get around much anymore.”
* * *
It was the usual Pier 4 time, maybe my last, now that I thought about it. The old joint was closing in about a month; more high-rises going up in the “Seaport District” formerly known as Southie. Anthony’s upstairs function room was crawling with lobbyists, legislators and assorted other hacks. I’ll tell you how shady the crowd was: I broke my own iron-clad and passed out four business cards that actually had my own name on them. It was a great “networking” opportunity for low friends in high places. There’s always a few veteran legislators looking down the barrel of a primary challenge, and that’s where I come in. Inside the Beltway, they call my job “oppo research.” I just call it digging up shit. Which is what I was doing at Pier 4, but most of the payroll patriots just assumed I was trolling for new bus
iness. Let ’em think that. It was better that way, plus I was killing two birds with one stone.
I gulped down a couple of gin and tonics, hold the tonic, to loosen up and then lingered around the back of the room. The only time I left was to go downstairs to the main dining room and grab a couple of Anthony’s famous hot popovers for old-time’s sake.
The sun was setting over the harbor and I’ll have to admit, the view was spectacular. I was going to miss this place. Anthony Athanas, the owner, had been a miserable old prick, but when he built Anthony’s Pier 4 he was way ahead of his time, right down to the huge parking lot.
It was around nine when they flashed the lights in the room and I saw a florid-faced guy at the podium, asking for quiet in the room. I knew him from Fenway Park. It was the probation commissioner, Drew Amato. I suddenly wished I’d brought along Katy Bemis. If she’d seen this, she’d have been totally onboard.
“You all know why we’re here tonight,” he said, as I noticed the two beefy guys standing behind him, their hands clasped in front of them, like they were his bodyguards, as if a probation commissioner needed bodyguards for anything but effect. On the other hand, maybe they worked for Donuts. He didn’t need bodyguards either, he needed bagmen, but these guys were much too conspicuous to be picking up cash. They looked like state cops on steroids, or do I repeat myself? As your bagman, you need someone nondescript, someone like, well, like me.
Amato began: “We’re here to pay tribute to our good pal, the Leader, who has done so much for all of us here, who never hesitates when any of us need a favor.”
I was growing slightly bilious. Favors? He had everything but a rate card for those so-called favors.
“Some of us may need an increase on our line item in the budget.” This was for the hacks. “Some of us may need an outside section inserted into the budget in conference committee.” This was for the lobbyists. They could put anything in an outside section, tack it on at the end of a budget along with hundreds of others, with no fingerprints, and with any luck no one would figure out for months what they’d done—a land-taking of some prime public real estate, a fake pension, a ninety-nine-year lease, putting fifty-year-olds on the State Police despite the age requirement. In other words, something you wouldn’t want to see splashed on the front page with your name in the headline. An outside section was so much easier than actually having to get a bill passed—and cheaper too, because you only have to pay off one guy, in this case Donuts.