Liars dice, p.16
Liar's Dice, page 16
“The man of the hour himself. I was about to call you, Mr. Cleary, and thank you.”
“Thank me? Thank me for what, calling you first?”
“No, to thank you for having the talk with my nephew.”
“I wouldn’t call it a conversation.”
“I know. He needed to learn the rules of the road, and you taught him.”
“Rules of the road?”
“You know how it is,” she said in the cheerful and disarming voice of Barbara Walters before she lowered the boom on her guest. “There’s always that one idiot behind the wheel who thinks the red light doesn’t apply to him. So, what does he do? He barrels on through the intersection as the light changes. If he’s caught, he’ll insist the light was amber. My nephew is that driver. He likes to see what he can get away with, and he always has an excuse when someone tries to hold him accountable. I’ve tried, as much as I’m allowed. His mother has only so much energy after a long day. You, my friend, succeeded.”
It took me a second to find words before I told her, “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. I’m grateful.”
“About the kid’s arm?”
“Don’t you worry about it, Mr. Cleary. He can do his homework and abuse himself with the other one. I’ll pay the ticket for the cast, the sling, the works, if it keeps the little anarchist out of trouble. Let him figure out the joys of being left-handed in a right-handed world. It’ll build character.”
I heard a voice, as if someone had walked into her office. She said she had to tend to business. I asked after Tammy, and she assured me that Tammy Costa would contact Bonnie, if she hadn’t already done it.
I hung up the phone, relieved.
I turned on the television, kept the volume respectable. I visited the fridge and returned to the parlor drinking a beer from a long-necked bottle. A beer was a rare treat for me, something I yoked to the memory of my father and his friends over a game of cards on a Friday night, but stranger to me was me sitting in the armchair waiting for the news. I never understood the addiction or the ritual people had with watching the news at five, at six, at ten, or before they went to bed. Unless it was an event of worldwide significance, I’d rather read the paper. I prefer ink on my fingertips to images inside my head because I can wash my hands. I can’t afford therapy.
I turned on the television and sat down. I looked at what was on the screen, recognized the channel, and recalled my mother telling me about the day she was in the studio of Boston’s Channel 4. President-elect Dwight Eisenhower was standing next to someone for a photo when the clock on the wall behind him fell on his head. I was four years old when it happened, but I recall how my mother would regale family and friends with her brush with fame during the holidays.
I heard the door open. Bonnie was home. I checked my watch. It was almost six. I hadn’t made or taken anything out for dinner, and I was beat from teaching two teenagers manners.
I heard her drop her keys into the glass bowl, the tired sigh, and the sound of her shoes hitting the floor. She’d hang up her coat next, undo the scarf around her neck like a man undid his tie at the end of the day. She had not called out to me or Delilah from the hallway, but I suspected that she had set her briefcase (a Homa, in leather and with the accordion web inside for folders and two metal tabs on top that required keys to open the bag) on the floor.
“I’m too tired to cook,” she said, coming into the room from behind me.
“We can do take-out.”
I was thinking of a half pizza from Newbury Pizza, one of the few places that served it with a thicker crust than Pizzeria Regina and with a lot more mozzarella. If you called late enough and they were down to the last of their anchovy pizzas, they’d sell it to you half price because the little fish were a hard sell. I was tempted, ready to pick up the phone and place an order, when I asked her to change the channel to 5 whose station motto was ‘Five is family.’ She shot me a dirty look.
“Do I look like a clicker to you, Shane Cleary?”
“But you’re already up and halfway there.”
She indulged me and clicked the dial to Channel 5. Solemnity engraved in their faces, Chet and Nat, a husband-and-wife team, spoke in somber tones: “Another police officer is dead. He was gunned down, one of three officers in the two weeks. More to follow.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven: FUBAR
I’d slept like a politician with a conscience. I tossed and turned most of the night, kicked the bedsheets off, and then pulled them back up. Bonnie lay still despite my movements. At some hour, my eyes opened, and I found Delilah staring at me through the darkness like the jungle cat I’d seen years ago. Shoulders hunched, her head forward, eyes intent on me.
I heard the beep. My hand groped the nightstand for the pager. Dot didn’t man the switchboard at that hour, so it would be another operator answering my call, and it seemed adulterous to talk with another woman when I called for my message. This page had to be urgent, and I thought of all the pagers, and all the doctors pulled from their beds for deliveries and surgeries, homicide detectives roused to a scene, or the million men with mistresses.
Operators all sounded alike. Almost.
Hunter had identified Dot as an Ohioan. The gal on the line with me was as native as they came—a hoodsie from Southie, the kind of thoughtful young lady who’d run to the packie in white sneakers, pockabook on her shoulder, to buy her old man a six-pack of Schlitz, and then a grinder on her way back to their triple-decker and split the sandwich with him. I asked for my message.
“There are several, all the same, and they came in twenty minutes apart, and all of them from the same caller, Mr. Cleary.”
“How many messages are we talking about?”
“Ten, Mr. Cleary, and he wouldn’t leave a number.”
“All the same message and caller?”
“That’s what I said.”
Definitely not the way Dot would’ve handled this traffic jam, but I wasn’t one to argue with her at four in the morning. She made her bread during the insomniac hour, so respect was due to her. “What time did the first call come in?”
“Two am. and the last one was at three-forty.”
I asked for the name.
“All he gave me was Bill. Does that help?”
“It does. What did he say?”
“Call me.”
Messages at a regular interval meant something bad with a capital B, like B-52 bombers overhead before they dropped pineapples. I verified the time. It was a little after four o’clock, no promise of sun in the sky, only clouds, all of them dark and dreadful as the sensation in my stomach.
I chose gray slacks, matching socks, an unhappy sweater, and an overcoat with a wool shearling collar. I thought of Hunter’s comment and set aside the .38 for my army keepsake, a .45 automatic from the metal box where I kept my papers, pictures, and medals.
I called Bill next. He answered with a hello, and like some old fling I asked, “Can I come over?” He said yes and hung up. Whatever it was he’d seen tonight was serious. Odd hour or not, there was no lilt to his Hello and no bright ring in his Yes. I expected the blank stare for a face and a gun in his hand on arrival.
As a foregone apology, I prepped Mr. Coffee for Bonnie.
Boston in winter before dawn is a beast. Frank Sinatra sang New York City is a city that never sleeps. Boston does, and it remembers everything when it awakens. The city accent may drop its Rs, but this city never forgets to recover, to rejuvenate, and to get revenge.
I walked to Bill’s place. I walked through the darkness before there was sunlight, before there were cars on the street. I didn’t need to be aware of the ice, the icicles, or the frost heaves on the road. I was aware of all the dangers.
I knocked on his door. Without my hearing the chain undone, the bolt thrown, he eased the door open and stepped aside, a nine mil in his right hand. The air in his apartment moved with nervous energy, with the fresh scent of espresso and smoked cigarettes. I peeled off my jacket and took off my hat. He noticed the rig and its inhabitant.
“Forty-five. Smart choice. You must be psychic.”
He invited me into the kitchen, a lit cigarette inside a notch in the rim of an ashtray. The overhead light, a single bulb in a tulip chandelier, was kicked to its highest setting. The tablecloth glared, and I saw two demitasse cups, one empty for me, and the other, full. He told me to sit.
Bill visited the stovetop and returned with the Bialetti to pour me some of that dark ink.
I asked. “Were we right? Same bar. Same three Puerto Ricans?”
“Same guys, same time, and same place, but there were visitors this time.”
“Visitors?”
“Car parked in front of the bar was a Pontiac, but not your typical Pontiac.”
I sipped some espresso. “I’m listening. Pontiac, different how?”
“Sixty-six Grande Parisienne. Black and maintained. Know the car?”
“Can’t say that I do, but an older car in good condition, in this weather, says devotion.”
He took a hit from his Marlboro Red. “It also says out of town, as in out of country.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Top of the line for GM in Canada. I checked the plates. Canadian as Je me souviens.”
I said, “French for ‘I remember.’ Motto for Quebec. What else?”
“Your friend is inside the bar with three Puerto Ricans and two Canadians. Those two Canadians may have driven over the tundra in their ice-breaker of a car, but they didn’t look French to me.”
“Italian?”
“It’s what I was thinking, but it gets better.”
Bill explained that he was observing them from across the street in his car. He was an experienced undercover agent and could hide in plain sight, like a sniper in a Ghillie suit, so integrated into the scenery that a bird would’ve mistaken him for part of a tree.
I said, “There’s more?”
“Yeah. Four cars behind me, there’s another guy.”
“What other guy?”
“Asked myself the same question, when two bruisers stepped out of his Chevy Caprice.”
“Was the color crimson?”
Bill paused. “I’d call it dark red, but yeah, crimson. Anyone you know?”
“Keep talking.”
“These two cross the street and enter the bar. At this point, I’m thinking they aren’t there for pints and a boiled dinner. The place has a large square window, so I can see everything, as if I were at a movie. The Italians do their thing, they hug, and they kiss, and everybody does a round of handshakes, including your boy, and they all sit down. They’re talking and—what?”
I held my hand up. “What about the driver of the Chevy Caprice?”
“In the car, as the lookout.”
I watched Bill light another cigarette. I counted ten butts in the ashtray. He’d been home since two am when he started the calls to Mercury and chain-smoked Marlboros.
“What went down?” I said.
“Fifteen or twenty minutes pass without a sign of disagreement. Dig?”
I did. “Someone crashed their party?”
Bill described how a Cadillac had crept up a side street, and four hitters stepped out. I understood the formation he described. Two stood ready at the rear door, and two would come in from the front. Somebody would give a signal, and these two teams would enter the place. They’d point and spray and work their way toward their targets. A lot could go wrong, but this took study and planning: likely they’d staked the place out and studied it during the day and made their move when the order had come down. It was obvious Hunter had survived, otherwise, the announcement of his death would’ve headlined this conversation.
I asked, “What could you see?”
“Muzzle fire in the night until there was nothing.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited and started counting.”
“Counting?” I said. “Why?”
Bill did the hitchhiker’s thumb. “Because there’s the Italian in a Chevy Caprice behind me.”
“Think he was in on the hit?”
“I don’t think so.” Bill mashed his cigarette into the tray. “Caprice gets out of his car, his piece drawn, and crosses the street double-time. I wait. Not a sound, not one. You know the kind of silence I’m talking about, Shane. It’s dark, and I’m there, watching nobody walk out, certainly not the four from the Cadillac. Chevy Caprice is like the one cockroach left, and what does he do?”
I answered. “He enters the Roach Motel.”
“And he almost checked out.”
“He came back outside?”
Bill described how Joey Cologne emerged a minute later, bloodied and staggering. “He’s walking to his car like he’s ready to drive himself to the local mob doctor.”
I asked. “How far did he make it?”
“Middle of the street, if that. I saw his face until he didn’t have one.”
“Bullet to the back of the head?”
“Yes, and there’s your friend behind him, in all his satanic majesty. He holsters his sidearm and reaches down to his ankle, and takes out a knife. He used it to extract the bullet.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Friend or Foe
I asked Bill, “Did he see you?”
“Think I’d be here if he had?”
“If you had engaged him, the answer would be no.”
No stranger to close calls or to death himself, Bill didn’t take well to how I’d said it. Cold and precise. If I’d been dishonest with Bill, it would’ve jeopardized whatever trust there was between us. He was my friend, my brother-in-arms. To the world, he was a fag, a queer who happened to be a cop.
“One last question, Bill.”
His voice raspy. “Yeah, sure. What is it?”
“Did he stop to collect the casing?”
“Yeah, he did.”
I rose from the chair and told him to take a shower, to freshen up before we hit the road.
He asked, “Where to?”
“I’ll explain later.”
I helped myself to a thimble of jet fuel, and discovered I liked espresso cold because it was thicker, almost a syrup, and that a touch of sugar sweetened the ride. What I didn’t like was seeing the can of Medaglia d’Oro on the shelf. Medal of Gold or Gold Medal, whichever way I translated it, I thought of Pedro Gonzalez and the medallion on his chest.
The shudder and squeal of pipes in the wall, and the sound of the shower confirmed the privacy I needed for the call. Bill would find the number on his next phone bill but, with some luck, we’d both be alive, and he wouldn’t care about who answered on the other end of the line.
I picked up the phone and dialed Pinto.
He did work ungodly hours and answered the phone. He asked for the number so he could call me back from a payphone. “In less than five minutes,” he promised. I agreed to his request, though I was suspicious, but Pinto and his lousy car were the least of my concerns.
Less than five minutes later, the phone rang. I picked up. He apologized for the runaround. He said he worked inside a shoebox for an office within the State House, and he didn’t trust his neighbors. Everybody in the building associated his face with the Commissioner and his right-hand man Shadow. Pinto was blunt about it and said the commissioner’s departure from the Commonwealth had left a sign around his neck, the subtitle schoolchildren used in their essays, FRIEND OR FOE?
“I’m here on a shoelace because one guy liked the Commissioner.”
“You trust him?”
“More than most, but I have no illusions. I’m expendable.”
“We all are,” I said. “I need a favor.”
“This have to do with my cousin?”
“I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t, but I hope that doesn’t sour my request.”
“It doesn’t,” Pinto said. “What is it?”
“First, a word of advice. Don’t go anywhere near your cousin’s file. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“At this point, they know you are his cousin.”
“They?” Pinto asked.
“I won’t go into details. Here is what I need you to do.”
I explained to Pinto that an article commemorating James Hoban would run in the Boston Herald, and that he ought to visit the newspaper’s office on Harrison Ave. I instructed him to ask for Delano Lindsey and to tell the professor that I sent him. Pinto asked me whether Delano would know his name, and I told him that Delano knew him as Pinto.
“You told him my name was Pinto?”
“I did, and it’s best he not know your real name.”
“Plausible deniability?”
“Something like that,” I said.
I knew his real name from his business card. Pinto had given me his card twice, once when he’d picked me off the street in the Combat Zone for a job. Salacious as that sounded, the assignment had been to investigate the suspicious death of a community activist for the Commissioner. The second time he’d handed me a card was when he’d driven me to City Hospital to see Pedro.
“What do you want me to tell the professor?”
“Ask him about the picture that the Herald will use for the article on Hoban.”
“That’s it?”
“No. I want you to find out all you can on whoever is in the picture with Hoban.”
“Am I looking for anything in particular? I’m no detective, Mr. Cleary.”
“But you’re perceptive and can read below the surface. You’ll find something.”
“Hey, I’m flattered, but I think you give me too much credit.”
“You survived under the Commissioner. You’re still around after he left, and when we first met, you gave me a book written by a Swedish author that was allegorical about evil and power. It’s no gold shield, but I’d say that qualifies you as intelligent.” I heard the shower stop. “I’ll call you in two days if I’m still alive.”
