Killers

by Howie Carr

  “I need a statement,” she said.

  “Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Because they think you’re still my…”

  “Here’s my quote,” I said. “It was all a gag.”

  “You pulled a gun on Sally Curto right before two professional hit men from New York opened fire on his car and it was a gag?”

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked. “They must have believed me.”

  “Senator Donahue and the commissioner got arrested tonight too. What’s the connection?”

  “Listen, Katy, why don’t we do lunch tomorrow? After a good night’s sleep, maybe I’ll remember more.”

  “I’ve got a deadline right now. It’ll be too late then.”

  “It’s never too late, Katy.” I hung up on her. It felt good. The phone immediately rang again, so I turned it off.

  Walking down the hill, with the Athens Garden on the other side, I spotted Sally Curto. He appeared to be waiting for a cab, which didn’t seem right for The Man, even though he was obviously not the prototypical Uber customer. He must not have had to hail a cab very often, because if he did, he’d have known enough to make his way to the Omni Parker House or Quincy Market, where there are always plenty around.

  “Sally, you need a ride home?” I said, and he jumped. He was still skittish. He’d had a very close call.

  I introduced myself, and asked him why he was standing out here.

  “Didn’t you have a lawyer in there?” I said.

  “Fuckin’ right I did,” he said.

  “And he couldn’t give you a ride home?”

  “For another seven hundred bucks an hour? No, thank you.”

  He said he’d have rather gone back to the hospital, but it was too late to see his son, and Jason was out of danger anyway.

  “Thanks, kid,” he said. “You really saved my ass. They told me your name’s Reilly? You don’t really look that Irish.”

  “My mother was Italian.”

  “I knew it!” he said. “I knew it!”

  “She was from Richmond Street.”

  “I knew it!”

  From then on, we were buddies. We walked back to my car—amazingly it hadn’t been towed, but there were $300 worth of orange tickets under the windshield wiper.

  “Fuck them meter maids,” Sally said, grabbing the orange tickets out of my hand. “Give ’em to me, I’ll fuckin’ show ’em who’s boss.”

  Which meant tearing the tickets up, and me getting them sent to me a second time, with surcharges. I grabbed them back and said I had an in at City Hall. He nodded and passed them over to me. I asked him where he wanted to go.

  “You know the Alibi?” he said.

  45

  BLINKY SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES

  I figured Sally would be stopping by. He hardly ever did, but tonight, he’d want to be filled in. He and Jack Reilly showed up about 12:30 a.m. Sally tried to make a John Gotti-esque entrance, but he was too tired to pull it off.

  Sally gave Patty a peck on the cheek and his usual line about how she ought to find herself a nice Italian boy. He shook hands with Hobart and hugged him. Then he just shook hands with a couple of the other guys who were a little lower on my organizational chart, which was why they didn’t rate a hug. Finally he motioned to me. We went to the booth closest to the restrooms. No one was going to need to relieve himself for a while.

  He even tried a little small talk.

  “You got yourself a good girl there,” he said of Patty. “I don’t know how many times I tell my poor Jason, always marry an Italian girl. They won’t go runnin’ to the cops on you when you slap ’em around.”

  I nodded. I knew the small talk was over.

  “So how’d you know what they were doing?” he said.

  “We put a bug under the table in their bar,” I said.

  “Who’s we?’”

  “Reilly there. I told you about him. He was working for some people up at the State House.”

  “Them motherfuckers shot my son. I want ’em dead.”

  “I think they already are, Sally. The ones we could get anyway.”

  “That cocksucker Benny Eggs, I want him hit in the head. And Blinky—it had to be Blinky.”

  “Blinky’s gone,” I said.

  “He run away already? To Florida?”

  “I mean, gone. Blinky ain’t coming back, Sally. Somebody hit him tonight when he pulled his car into the garage. He had some fucking punk kid with him too, a ‘bodyguard.’ He had to go too.”

  Sally stared at me silently for what seemed like ten seconds. Then he leaned across the table and without saying anything gave me a big wet kiss on the cheek. A tear rolled down his cheek.

  “Did he say anything?” Sally asked.

  “Sally,” I said, “you know I don’t do, ‘did he say anythings?’”

  Besides which, the only time anybody ever says anything before they get hit is in the movies. Famous last gangster words—there aren’t any. If you give a guy time to say, “You dirty rat,” you’re also giving him time to pull a two-shot derringer out of his sleeve. The only time a guy ever said anything to me was when we were sitting in a car by the Bunker Hill Monument and he laid out a couple of lines of cocaine and asked me, “Do you want a line?”

  Those were his last words. I’ll leave it at that.

  “Is this it?” Sally finally asked. “The end of the war?”

  “Yeah, if you want to call it a war.”

  “My nephew got killed, my son got shot. Hole in the Head is dead. Yeah, I’d call it a war.”

  I reached over and patted him on the arm. “Sorry,” I said. “You need a new driver too.”

  He sneered. “I never trusted that cocksucker Benny Eggs.”

  “I hope not,” I said, “because I got a hunch right now he’d be willing to tell the feds he shot Kennedy if he thought it would get him into the Program, or at least keep him locked up so’s we can’t get to him.”

  “And all along I thought it was Cheech,” he said.

  “I told you Blinky was a rat. He thought he could slip in and be the new Stevie, or Whitey. The guy on top ratting out everybody underneath.”

  Sally waved me off. “Nah, Cheech made more sense as the rat.”

  “After his own brother got killed?”

  “That’s why I suspected him. You know how many times Hole in the Head tried to cap him?”

  Now, he said, he was going to have to promote Cheech. We’d have a big dinner tomorrow night at the Café Ravenna, he said, and afterwards, down at the Nite Lite, with only the made men present, he’d make the big announcement. It was fine by me. Let the guineas have all the fun burning Mass cards and pricking their fingers. Like all good drivers, whether in organized crime or politics, Cheech was finally going to get a soft job. And now that the war was over, Sally wouldn’t be needing any more tough-guy chauffeurs.

  “George Graft is okay,” Sally said. “I know him since Tech High. He’s the last guy I got left who don’t get lost in Roxbury. Maybe I’ll use my boy, too, after he gets out of the hospital.”

  “Be a while, huh?”

  “Yeah, he needs rehab on his legs, they said. They really did a number on him, these motherfuckers.”

  I didn’t say the obvious. They could have killed him. This is what happens to your kids, or your nephews, if you’re in what they used to call the life.

  “You want a drink?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, a double Drambuie, on the rocks. And don’t give me any of that cheap-ass Lechmere coffee brandy either. I ain’t one of your mick hod-carrier customers who can’t tell the difference. Capisce?”

  “One more thing,” I said.

  “Whatever you say,” he said.

  “No more Liz,” I said. “Leave her alone.”

  “Right hand of God…”

  46

  AVE ATQUE VALE

  The next night we all had dinner at Sally’s place on Hanover Street—the Café Ravenna. Bench McCarthy called me in the mor
ning and told me I could bring a date, but not that daffy bitch from the Globe. Briefly, very briefly, I thought about asking him if Patty had a sister, but I was afraid what his answer might be. What if he said yes?

  I asked him if it was really wise to have everybody assemble in one place, and he said it was the best thing to do, to allay any lingering suspicions the feds had about a gang war.

  I called Katy and talked to her for about a half-hour, without mentioning my plans for the evening. I gave her some warmed-over human-interest stuff, as she calls it, not that any of it seemed very interesting compared to the real story. But for some reason she was in a good mood, maybe because she’d already had a front-page exclusive on the Globe website about the formerly missing Beezo Watson now being a “person of interest” in the five murders. Despite the fact that she knew it was bullshit, she’d played it straight, and the story had already been picked up by Drudge. That meant hundreds of thousands of extra hits. And there was another bit of news that she passed on.

  “They posted a job listing this morning for a new metro columnist,” she said.

  “It took them this long to get rid of McGee?” I asked.

  “You always said there’s a lot of inbreeding over here.”

  “Yeah, but I was talking about the fact that they don’t have chins anymore.”

  “The brains are the second thing to go,” she said, “after the chins.”

  “Is it going to be held against you,” I asked, “that you seem to know a lot of Roman Catholics who were actually born in Boston and who don’t celebrate diversity?”

  “They already think there’s something wrong with me, running around with you.”

  “Present tense?” I asked.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, and hung up.

  I had to get to the courthouse to attend the preliminary appearances of the senator and the commissioner. It was my last assignment for Mr. Caulfield. They were already wearing the orange prison jumpsuits issued by the Plymouth County Correctional Facility.

  I didn’t say anything to them, but I recognized the senator’s lawyer; he’d been mine when I had my little problem at City Hall all those years ago.

  He came over to where I was sitting in the second row, behind the cops and the assistant U.S. attorneys and the reporters, most of whom didn’t recognize me, thank God.

  “Have your ears been burning, Jack?” my old lawyer whispered with a smile.

  “I don’t know why they would be,” I said.

  “My client says you put a wire under the table in his booth.”

  I leaned in even closer to him. “Tell your client there were two wires under that table—and that’s off the record. I’ll deny it if you call me as a witness.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s in the feds’ statement of facts.”

  “Not my name?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “They don’t do that. The way they see it, it’s free advertising for you. They don’t do any favors for anybody, as I think you’ll recall. Besides, there were no fingerprints on your wire.”

  These initial hearings never last very long. The defendants always look distracted, at least if this is their first time getting lugged, which it was. They’re doing the math in their heads, how much time, multiplying it by eighty-five percent, trying to remember what they’ve already been told down in the joint about how the sentencing guidelines work.

  I wondered if anyone had yet mentioned the grenades in the car. Thirty years on and after is always a disappointment.

  The senator looked back and smiled at his wife, who sat stone-faced. I’ll bet she’d told him this was going to happen. I’ll bet she’d told him over and over and over again. Or at least that was going to be her story now. If I were him right about now, I might prefer the House of Correction to the old homestead.

  Back on Beacon Street, I reported back to the Caulfields, the old man and his son. We sat down in the office and his son Terry poured drinks. A lot was happening at the State House too. The Senate president had accepted his floor leader’s resignation “with deep sadness”—appropriately so, since it was also going to end his campaign for governor. The commissioner had been suspended—without pay. I guess he wasn’t in the union anymore.

  “They’re moving the casino bill out of committee tomorrow,” Terry Caulfield said. “They want to make sure there’s no appearance of impropriety.”

  We all got a good laugh about that one and poured another round all around.

  They were so pleased with how everything had turned out that they wrote me a bonus check for $2,000. I almost fainted, but I had to get moving. Before dinner, I had to meet a guy at J.J. Foley’s who wanted to talk to me about the $500 million worth of paintings that had been stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

  I’ll tell you about that some other time.

  47

  SALLY DELIVERS A SPEECH

  Sally usually sat at a table in the back of the main room at the Café Ravenna, with no one allowed to sit at any of the adjoining tables. He didn’t want any eavesdropping. But tonight he took over the entire back room, which was usually reserved for parties. He had two off-duty Boston cops sweep the place for bugs, not that any crimes were going to be committed tonight, at least we weren’t planning any.

  It was a small gathering. Patty and I and Hobart from Somerville. Jack Reilly showed up with Slip Crowley, the Boston city councilor who was a friend of Reilly’s and, more important, had done Sally a lot of favors back in the old days when he was on the Boston Licensing Board. George Graft was there, and Cheech. And a few others—half-ass wiseguys from Sally’s social club and a couple of their wives. I also noticed Spucky and Jimmy Lynnway, the wiseguys he’d been planning to send after Liz McDermott. They were apparently coming aboard full-time. It was like a Mafia wedding.

  On Sally’s orders, they had a bartender on. We were all getting a good buzz on when Sally called the meeting to order.

  “First,” he says, “I would like to offer a toast to all of youse. Youse are all a beautiful fucking guy.”

  He’d been into it, all right, all afternoon. But nobody was going to say anything. He went on at some length about his son’s condition—improving. Then he mentioned Slip Crowley’s ancient machinations for him with his old Combat Zone liquor licenses at City Hall—some of which were pretty amusing. About twenty minutes in, Sally got to me.

  “This guy Bench,” he said, “not many people know it—”

  “And I’d just as soon keep it that way, Sally.”

  That got a few laughs, and gave a couple of people a chance to get up and get drinks or go to the bathroom. But of course it didn’t stop Sally.

  “I meet this kid, I’m doing a bit in Norfolk, on a bullshit state gambling beef. And I run into this kid, and I mean he is a kid, he’s like seventeen years old. In the can with all these hard-core criminals like me, they called him something, in-something, what’d they call you, Bench?”

  “Incorrigible.” I could see this all ending up on the front page of the paper someday.

  “Lemme tell you how incorrigible. I got some problems back then with some wiseguys in Revere, and they thought with me in the joint, it’d be a good idea to hire this big fucking—”

  “Sally, please,” I said.

  “I know, Bench.” He paused, then looked out at the gathering. “You know what Bench likes to remind me of, and I ain’t kiddin’ here. He always says, ‘There’s no statute of limitations on murder.’”

  At this point I decided an intervention was in order. I stood up and pushed back my chair.

  “Folks,” I said, raising my wineglass, “what the olive-oil importing business gained, the criminal bar lost. You would have made a helluva criminal lawyer, Sally.” I clinked my glass with Patty’s. “Here’s to Sally, our pal, we’re glad you’re okay, and Jason’s gonna be okay, and I’m okay, and everybody’s okay. Salud!”

  Sally was winded, thank God. He sat down heavily and George Graft brought him
another drink. The Café Ravenna is a traditional North End tomato-sauce place, which is to say, nothing memorable. But this night I swear they must have ordered out from one of the good joints, maybe Bricco.

  Everything was top notch. The antipasto, and none of that wilted iceberg-lettuce salad as the second dish. Perfect eggplant parmagian, and then veal saltimbocca, exquisite, which we were chowing into when suddenly Liz McDermott came barging into the back room, the maître d’ in hot pursuit. She was wearing her ten-gallon hat again.

  “Sally,” she said, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Sally stood up and waved off the maître d’. Then he looked over at George Graft, who was also getting up, and shook his head. Sally would handle this one by himself. Patty leaned over to say something to me, but I shushed her. I knew Sally would be speaking too softly for me to hear much, but I wanted to try to catch at least a few words of what he was saying to her.

  He was gesticulating wildly, and then he reached into his coat pocket and came up with a wad of cash, which he threw at her. Then he flicked her hat, which gave the play away, if I’d had any doubts. He turned back around and nodded at Spucky and Jimmy Lynnway, who were standing at attention, more bodyguards than guests.

  As Liz staggered out, I stood up and walked out of the room. The men’s room was behind the bar, so it didn’t look suspicious. But instead of going to the head, I ducked out the emergency exit in back and dashed back around the building out onto Hanover Street. Then I stepped into the doorway of Mike’s Pastry next door and waited for Liz to come by. She was still counting the cash Sally had given her as I grabbed her and pulled her into the bakery.

  “Liz,” I said, “I thought I told you to get out of town.”

  “Ah, Bench, it’s just one more night.” Her words were slurred, she was swaying. I wondered how much of Henry Sheldon’s money she still had left. “Give Liz a kiss—”