“No,” Frankie said.
“I can do something for a guy,” Cogan said. “I don’t have to, but I can. Now make the pick, kid, and make it right now. I’m gonna do China a favor, I’m not gonna do China a favor. Don’t matter to me.”
“Lemme think,” Frankie said.
“Nope,” Cogan said, “no thinking. Go or no go, right now. I got to get going.”
Frankie exhaled heavily. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Can you do the other thing?” Cogan said.
Frankie hesitated. “No,” he said.
“Well,” Cogan said, “that’s the selection. So, I guess you know, then.”
What’ve I gotta do?” Frankie said.
“You gotta find out where he’s gonna be,” Cogan said.
“I already know that,” Frankie said. “We’re, he asked me what I was gonna be doing, he’s gonna be some place and he wants to call me or something. I know where he’s gonna be. He’s got a girl. He told me that, before. I told him I was gonna be home, I’d be home.”
“You’re not gonna be,” Cogan said.
“I’m not?” Frankie said.
“No,” Cogan said.
“Where …” Frankie said.
“You’re gonna be with me,” Cogan said, “and we’re gonna be where he’s gonna be.”
“Jesus,” Frankie said, “I can’t do that. He sees me, it’s all over. He’ll know, something’s wrong. I can’t do that. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you where he’s gonna be. I’ll do that. But, he’s a friend of mine. I can’t do that.”
“Okay,” Cogan said, “okay. That’s, you made the other choice then, I guess.”
Frankie stared at Cogan. Cogan did not move. Frankie said: “Have I really got to do that?”
Cogan nodded.
“All of it?” Frankie said.
Cogan nodded.
“I got to be there and everything?”
Cogan nodded.
“It’s not,” Frankie said, “it’s not like, there was anything I could do, anybody else inna world couldn’t do. It’s not that. You, there must be hundreds of guys, you can get. You don’t need me.”
“Wrong,” Cogan said. He put his hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “Frank,” he said, “it’s not like I don’t understand what’s on your mind, right? But this thing’s a problem. And part of it, it’s partly your fault. You made a mistake. Now you gotta, you got to do the right thing. You gotta show, you understand, you made a mistake, and you gotta make things right. Otherwise, guys know you made a mistake, right? And that’s when they’re gonna want somebody to do something, like with Trattman. He never did the right thing.”
Frankie nodded.
18
Frankie drove the Gold Duster quickly through the arch with the orange lanterns into the curving drives of Stuart Manor. The apartment complexes were two-story, the first of vertical redwood planks, the second stucco, half-timbered. The parking areas were filled with Volkswagens, Camaros, Mustangs and Barracudas. There were coach lights with orange bulbs above each door.
“Jee-zuss,” Cogan said, “I finally made it. I’m in ghinny heaven.”
The small tires on the Duster howled as Frankie took it through the curves to the back of the third complex. “It’s a singles place,” he said. “You’re supposed to live here if you wanna get laid.”
“I’d have to get awful horny to drive to New Hampshire to get laid,” Cogan said.
“It’s not that far,” Frankie said. “I thought the same thing, but Johnny got tied up one night and I hadda bring her back up here. It’s not that far.”
“Seems far to me,” Cogan said. “This, this just proves it to me. The guy’s a shit.”
“He don’t have no control, where the girls live,” Frankie said. He pulled into an empty space and shut off the engine and the lights.
“He don’t have no control,” Cogan said. “Period.”
“Jackie,” Frankie said, “he’s really not a bad guy, you know? He’s not a bad guy at all.”
Cogan slouched down in the seat. The suede coat piled up around him at the neck. He shut his eyes. “None of ’em are,” he said. “They’re all nice guys. They just get to thinking, you know?”
“He was always all right to me,” Frankie said.
“Sure,” Cogan said. “Got you almost six years inna fuckin’ slammer.”
“That wasn’t his fault,” Frankie said.
“Kid,” Cogan said, “when somebody does something, and somebody, he gets somebody else, and they go to fuckin’ jail for it, it’s his fault. That’s the rule.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Frankie said.
“Then this isn’t your fault,” Cogan said. “If that wasn’t his fault, this isn’t your fault.”
“He didn’t mean it,” Frankie said.
“Hasn’t got nothing to do with it,” Cogan said, “nothing at all.”
A blue Rallye Nova passed behind the Duster.
“That them?” Cogan said.
“Nah,” Frankie said. “John, John’s got a Riviera.”
“I know what he’s got,” Cogan said. “What I want to know is, that them?”
“Nope,” Frankie said. “I’d’ve said if it was. You got him wrong, you know. That jail thing, he had it worse’n I did, his family and all.”
“He’s not gonna have to do it again,” Cogan said.
“He stood up,” Frankie said. “He could’ve blamed it all on us.”
“In a way,” Cogan said, “he did.”
“He did not,” Frankie said. “He never said shit.”
“He didn’t say shit about you, maybe,” Cogan said. “He still called somebody up.”
“About what?” Frankie said. “What’d he call up?”
“He knows how you do things,” Cogan said. “He knows how you’re supposed to, anyway. He knows.”
“What’s he know?” Frankie said.
“Ever hear of the Doctor?” Cogan said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Frankie said. “Dillon says he’s dead. I know.”
“When’re you talking to Dillon?” Cogan said.
“I didn’t talk to him,” Frankie said. “Johnny told me that, said Dillon said the Doctor’s dead.”
“He is dead,” Cogan said.
“Okay,” Frankie said, “you and Johnny and Dillon, the whole bunch of you say the Doctor’s dead. Big deal.”
“The Squirrel says he’s dead,” Cogan said.
“Johnny said Dillon told him, the Doctor’s dead,” Frankie said.
“That shit,” Cogan said. “That fuckin’ shit.”
A brown Maverick Grabber passed behind the Duster.
“Still not them,” Frankie said. “Why?”
“Because he knows it himself,” Cogan said. “He knows very fuckin’ well, the Doctor’s dead.”
“How’s he know?” Frankie said.
“He paid a man,” Cogan said, “he paid a man, five thousand dollars, get the Doctor dead.”
“Bullshit,” Frankie said.
“What’s his wife’s name,” Cogan said, “you want me to tell you, tell you what she looks like and everything, used to wear them big gold-hoop earrings? Connie.”
“So what?” Frankie said.
“That’s the broad that delivered the money,” Cogan said. “For the Doctor’s ass. Think he’d pay that if he didn’t know it was done?”
Frankie did not answer.
“You know why, Frank, he got the Doctor?” Cogan said.
“Yeah,” Frankie said, “I know.”
“Sure,” Cogan said. “Doctor made a mistake, did something he wasn’t supposed to. That’s why.”
“Well,” Frankie said, “he did.”
“Sure he did,” Cogan said. “So’d he.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Frankie said. “It’s not the same thing at all.”
A maroon Monte Carlo passed behind the Duster.
“Sure it is,” Cogan said, “the Do
ctor got taken out for getting everybody in the shit. And that’s what him and you did. You just thought, the only thing that was different, you thought Trattman’d get blamed for it.”
A red Capri passed behind the Duster.
“That’s what I mean,” Cogan said. “You don’t get away with things like that. Trattman was the same way. Thought he was gonna get away with it.”
“He did,” Frankie said. “Once.”
“That’s what I mean,” Cogan said. “You don’t get away with nothing once, it happens again.”
The bronze Riviera passed behind the Duster.
“That’s him,” Cogan said.
“I’m not sure,” Frankie said.
“Yes you are,” Cogan said. “If you’re not you got the first all-over hard-on in the world.” He opened his eyes and watched the Riviera. It pulled in beyond the back door of the complex.
“How long’s he gonna be, kid?” Cogan said.
“I dunno,” Frankie said.
“Okay,” Cogan said, “I asked you nice. Now, does he fuck her here or does he fuck her some place else?”
“She’s got a roommate,” Frankie said. “He knows a guy’s got a motel in Haverhill.”
“Okay,” Cogan said, “he’s just gonna be friendly, then.” He watched as the door of the Riviera opened. He watched the long white leg of the girl. He watched Amato emerge from the building shadow and walk around the rear of the car. He watched Amato assist the girl from the car and shut the door.
Cogan reached down on the floor of the Duster with both hands and picked up a five-shot Winchester semiautomatic shotgun. He put it across his lap, steadying it with his right hand. With his left hand he took the key out of the Duster’s ignition.
“Hey,” Frankie said, “I mean, I was gonna start it and everything, we could get a start.”
“I know,” Cogan said, “but, it’s probably gonna get noisy around here, and I known guys, heard a lot of noise, they got too good a start and left somebody standing around with his thumb up his ass.”
Cogan watched Amato walk the girl to the door of the apartment complex.
Cogan opened the passenger door of the Duster, exposing the masking tape he had used to seal the interior light switch off, and slipped out of the car. Amato and the girl were thirty-five yards away, embracing at the door. Cogan crouched against the car, his left elbow bracing against the top of the Duster’s hood, the stock of the gun tight against his right shoulder.
Amato broke the embrace. The girl opened the door with a key. Amato waited on the step until the door closed behind her. She turned and waved at him, using only the fingers of her right hand. She was smiling. Amato waved back, in the same way. He turned away from the door. The girl vanished up the stairs.
Cogan fired the first deer slug at Amato. It caught him low on the abdomen and hurled him backward against the building. Cogan waited until Amato hit the top of his low arc. Then Cogan fired the second slug. It hit Amato higher, slightly above the belt on the left side, and went through him, taking an angle through his body which sent it through the glass panel of the door at his left. Cogan fired the third shot as Amato hit the wall of the building and started to sag down. It hit him in the middle of the chest, close to the base of his throat, and blew his chest apart. Amato toppled off to his own right in the low shrubbery.
Cogan backed up fast and got into the car. He shoved the shotgun into the back seat and stuck the key into the ignition. “Now gimme that start,” he said.
The Duster leaped out of the space, taking the curves of the drive with the small tires screaming.
Three and one-half miles from Stuart Manor, Cogan said: “You’re going too fast.”
“Jesus,” Frankie said, “they’re gonna have all kinds of cops up here.” He held the Duster steady at seventy on the two-lane road.
“And one of them’s gonna catch us,” Cogan said. “Slow down.”
“I can’t,” Frankie said.
“Kid,” Cogan said, “look, slow down, all right?”
“I can’t,” Frankie said. “Honest to God, I can’t.”
“Kid,” Cogan said, “my car’s in Massachusetts. We got a long way to go. I don’t wanna get caught.”
“You wanna drive?” Frankie said.
“Yeah,” Cogan said.
Frankie pulled the Duster off on the shoulder of Route 64. He opened the driver’s side door quickly and got out and trotted around the back of the car. Cogan slid across the seats. Frankie got in on the passenger side.
“Okay,” Cogan said, putting the Duster in drive, “now, this means, you’re gonna have to dump the gun.”
“Okay,” Frankie said.
Cogan stopped the Duster on the overpass at the Shawsheen River in Andover, Massachusetts. Frankie opened the passenger window and launched the gun out into the darkness. He started to close the window.
“Wait,” Cogan said.
There was a splash.
“Okay,” Cogan said. He put the Duster in gear again. “Grass and stuff don’t take care of prints,” he said. “Water does.”
Cogan wheeled the Duster into the parking lot at the Northshore Plaza west of Salem. Behind Jordan Marsh’s there was a blue LTD.
“You know what you got to do, now,” Cogan said, driving toward the LTD.
“Sure,” Frankie said. “I go back down to where my car is and I leave this one and I go home.”
“You just leave it,” Cogan said.
“Oh Christ,” Frankie said, “I wipe it down.”
“You’re all right and everything,” Cogan said.
“Yeah,” Frankie said.
“Where’s your car again?” Cogan said.
“For Christ sake,” Frankie said, “it’s down at, it’s inna lot at Auburndale.”
“Just making sure,” Cogan said. “You couldn’t drive right, there. Some times guys forget.”
Cogan pulled the Duster up next to the LTD. The parking lot was lighted, but empty. Cogan opened the driver’s side door. Frankie started sliding across the seat. Cogan got out. Frankie slid into the driver’s seat. He put his hands on the wheel. Cogan held the door handle in his left hand. With his right hand he removed a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight Police Special, two-inch barrel, from beneath his coat.
“You’re gonna remember, now,” Cogan said, holding the revolver below the level of the window.
“I know, I know,” Frankie said, “I dump the fuckin’ car and I get my car and I don’t go too fast and I-”
Cogan raised the revolver and shot Frankie in the face, once. Frankie fell off toward the passenger seat. Cogan leaned in the window and put the muzzle of the revolver against Frankie’s chest and fired four times, the powder blast burning Frankie’s coat. The body shuddered with each shot.
Cogan put the revolver in the pocket of his car coat. He took unlined leather gloves from the other pocket, and a red handkerchief. He began to wipe the Duster down.
19
In the middle of the afternoon, Cogan parked his flame-painted white El Camino pickup beside the silver Toronado in the lot at the Holiday Inn at South Attleboro, Massachusetts. The sign next to the Toronado said: “Welcome, South Jaycees.” Cogan went inside.
In the lounge the driver sat at the bar, dawdling with a large ginger ale. Cogan took the stool next to him.
“You’re late,” the driver said.
“My mother used to tell me that,” Cogan said. “ ‘You’ll be late for your own funeral.’ I hope so.”
“Had yourself quite a party,” the driver said.
“I do the best I can,” Cogan said. To the bartender he said: “Beer.”
The bartender filled a stein with Michelob.
“Everything’s under control now, I take it,” the driver said. “At long last.”
“You know,” Cogan said, “for a guy I’m trying to help out and everything, you’re awful hard to get along with. I could’ve made you drive up to Boston, you know. I hadda go to Framingham, I didn’t have to come d
own here. I’m trying to be nice to you.”
“What the hell’s wrong in Framingham,” the driver said, “sky falling there or something?”
“Nah,” Cogan said. “Stevie was outa hundred-millimeters and I had his car anyway and he had my truck, so I went out there and met him and give him some. I like to do a guy a favor now and then.”
“Do me a favor,” the driver said. “Never do me any favors. I’ve seen how you work.”
“Tell you what,” Cogan said, “gimme the money.”
The driver handed Cogan a thick white business envelope.
“ ’Scuse me,” Cogan said. He slid off the stool.
“You going to count it?” the driver said.
“I gotta take a leak,” Cogan said. “Just lemme alone, all right? You make me nervous. I get nervous, I always gotta take a leak. Have some more ginger ale, for Christ sake.”
Cogan went to the Men’s Room. Cogan returned.
“You feel better?” the driver said.
“No,” Cogan said, “there’s only fifteen in there.”
“Three guys,” the driver said. “I’m not sure, I had to ask him whether I should pay you for the kid or not. He said I should.”
“He was right, too,” Cogan said. “That’s five apiece.”
“Correct,” the driver said. “That’s what he told me to pay Mitch.”
“Yeah,” Cogan said, “but the way I got it, Mitch got inna fight with a whore, the dumb shit, and now they got him in the can. Mitch couldn’t do it. I come through for everybody on short notice. From now on, the price’s ten.”
“Dillon only charges five,” the driver said. “He told me that, too.”
“Not any more,” Cogan said.
“Look,” the driver said, “you’re filling in for Dillon. You get what Dillon gets. No more. Take it up with Dillon. I can’t do anything about it.”
Killing Them Softly Page 19