“The checkbook. That should nail you,” I said.

  Knowing my background, Albergo didn’t have to spell it out. “You’re off your fucking rocker, pal. You think you can nail me, go try it. It’s been tried. I could pick up that phone and...”

  He spread his hands, a modest man reluctant to demonstrate his immense power. “Even in New York I could. Even with a Fed I could. I could do it and get backed up. So who are you?”

  “Nothing, a zero,” Coraldi chimed in.

  “You can’t use Kinch to nail me, you can’t use the checkbook. First because the old man’s your friend. I respect you for that.” Albergo had shown me the fist; next he put on the glove. “We checked your record and you got this loyalty thing.”

  I said there were limits.

  “Bullshit. You owe the old man. We know that too. Then maybe you think you can make it look like we roped in the old bastard with lies. You think the jury’s going to believe that? Not when my lawyer gets up and tells how I come here—okay an ex-con but now a legit businessman—and the Chief tries to shake me down. Not try—he does it. Maybe first he checks around and finds I been having trouble in other towns because of my record. So he says he’ll give me a hard time if I move here. So you know what? I’m tired, I’m old, all I want is some peace in my old age. So I pay.”

  “It’s a three handkerchief picture,” I said. Albergo snapped his fingers and Flaherty got a cigar for the great man and lit it for him. “Crying for me,” Albergo said between puffs, “the jury. Especially when the Chief’s wife testifies it’s a hundert percent true.”

  That was something I hadn’t expected.

  “A good woman and a fine wife,” Albergo continued, “but she can’t stand it no more, married to a lying hypocrite. Makes no difference the old man was voted Small Town Police Chief USA 1969. I mean it bothers her.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Albergo was laying down a real smokescreen with the salami-sized cigar. “Never surer, my friend. All my lawyer has to do is ask the lady. She begs the old man not to do it, says she doesn’t want all those things he keeps promising. Will he listen? No, sir. He thinks that’s the only way he can keep her, but he’s broker than hell. Owes the bank money, owes in the stores.” Pausing to dislodge a shred of tobacco from his dentures, Albergo added, “We check everything, pal.”

  “Fucking right,” Coraldi agreed.

  “You drag him in he could get ten years,” Albergo argued. “Okay, so he’s sick so he gets a suspended—but no pension. After thirty years all he gets is disgrace. Hey, you want to kill the old man?”

  “Not the old man,” I said.

  Albergo laughed but the bodyguard didn’t think it so funny. “You know what a bitch she is, so you know we got her in the bag,” Albergo said. “How’d you think we spotted Kinch as a mark? You think we just walked into some strange town and slip a bundle to the chief of police? Shit! It was the bitch sicced us onto the old man. Down in Boston she picks up Tony here in a bar, gets loaded, lays him, starts telling her troubles. No dough—can’t buy nothing. A lucky break for us and Kinch fell like a plum. Nothing he wouldn’t do for that piece of ass.”

  “A rotten apple,” Coraldi amended.

  “Who asked you, lover?” Albergo was in good humor, “Hey, you got the checkbook, Greeley, why don’t you give it back? A better idea, why don’t you keep it? No trouble to change the account name.”

  I said I would have to think it over.

  Albergo said, “We could make you give it back.”

  “Maybe it’s already with the F.B.I.”

  “Not a chance. You mailed it out of town general delivery. You’re waiting to see if the old man lives or dies. Right?” Albergo was pleased with his detective work. “So what’s it going to be?”

  He went to the desk and got a notebook from his briefcase and thumbed through it. At the right page he stopped and smiled. “How’s Benny Schindler these days? Then there’s Harry Moscowitz. All these bookies you took from. I hate to say this—you’re a crooked cop.”

  “Nobody ever proved it.”

  “Because Schindler and Moscowitz never talked. Not even when the grand jury hit them for contempt they never talked.” Shaking his head with admiration, Albergo put the notebook away.

  “Then they won’t talk now,” I told him. “They don’t work for the Mob. They couldn’t stay in business if they talked.”

  Albergo saw my point but presented a counter argument. “Out of business is better than dead,” he said. “They’ll get their memories back if the right people talk to them. How’d you like to be indicted for perjury, bribery, conspiracy—the statute hasn’t run out yet. You could get five to ten.”

  “Do it, Joe, see what happens.” I knew he could do it.

  There was indignation in Albergo’s face. “What’re you talking? You think Joe Albergo is a lousy fink? What I’m saying is what could happen and my name wouldn’t even come into it. Two bookies get an attack of conscience and you’re up shit creek.”

  I said I would try to bring him along for the boat ride.

  Albergo threw up his hands, then rubbed both sides of his face. “The guy’s crazy. I’m offering to make him rich and he gives me a hard time.”

  Coraldi agreed that I was crazy.

  “All right, okay,” Albergo said, a man worn out by arguments. He gave the unfinished cigar to Flaherty and watched him crunch the life out of it. “Come on, pal, lay it on the table. What is it you want from me? Don’t cock around, say what you want.”

  Well, it was worth a try. “I want you gone, nothing personal. You’re a doll, okay? You made a deal with Kinch and it got fucked up. It cost twenty thousand but you get it back, every nickel. You don’t want trouble, I don’t want trouble. Pick some other town—lots of towns. What you do is no sweat off my balls. Just don’t do it here. Simple?”

  Albergo urged me to sit down and I did. Then he drew his own chair up close and said, “Not so simple. You mentioned Montreal a minute ago. You can’t touch me, so here it is. My organization’s got a big interest in this state. It never did before because there was nothing here. Still not much. Now it comes to us that Montreal is thinking of expanding their operation south. They can’t go north because there’s nothing but snow and polar bears, shit like that. So it goes to the Commission for a ruling and the Commission says the Boston-Providence organization has first crack. We get to open up the new territory but make it fast, the Commission tells us. Stake a claim, like they say. This town is it. Otherwise Montreal gets everything. You follow?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Albergo said: “Do it right, they tell me, and you get to run the whole state. Do it wrong and...” Albergo made a gun out of his hand and waggled the thumb like a hammer falling on the pin.

  “You don’t want to make trouble for Mr. Albergo,” Coraldi said.

  “Butt out,” Albergo said. “What’s the beef, is what I want to know. You got some gambling here now. What’s the matter we move in? We got vending machines with candy, cigarettes just as good. You think we’re going to run whores, push dope, start a shylocking gig? Well, yeah, maybe a little shylocking. We’re in business like the rest of the country. So tell me the problem.”

  “He doesn’t want dirty wops to dirty up his nice clean town,” Coraldi said. “That’s what I think.”

  Albergo said to me, “You can’t stop us. Nobody can. We’re too big. Play ball and you get rich, do it the other way and you get stepped on.”

  “By us dirty wops,” Coraldi threatened.

  I thought of Eddie Bose, other Italian guys. “You talk again and I’ll shove that gun down your throat.”

  The hood stood up with the automatic under the newspaper. “You try that,” he said.

  “Christ sake, cool down,” Albergo said.

  “I still want to think about it,” I told Albergo.

  “I think you want more. I think that,” Albergo said. “Your record says you’re looking out for Number One all the time. Don’t take too long. In or out. It won’t wait.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I DUG OUT enough change to call the Cape Neddick Hospital from the pay phone at Mullins’ gas station. They put me through to the head nurse and she said I’d better talk to the doctor. When he came on he sounded tired; dead men on the highway were old stuff to him.

  “We’re working on him now,” he said the way a carpenter would speak of a half-finished floor. “High alcohol content in the blood. Driving too fast, skidded, and now he’s dead. Police here haven’t been able to locate any next of kin.”

  I was able to help with that. “He has one son Michael. Tell them to call the Peace Corps, Washington.”

  Well, there it was. Eddie was dead and Albergo was still walking around. The doctor hadn’t said anything about suspicious circumstances and I didn’t go into it. To the doctor it was a clear case of drunk driving, and why not? A car, a drunk, icy roads! The state police would see it the same way, and if there were any dents on the side of Eddie’s car when it was forced off the road, nobody would think anything of it. I could imagine how Eddie cursed and yelled when they caught up with him on a lonely stretch of road and started to crowd him. A beat-up pick-up with a powerful motor was what they’d use for a job like that; and at first maybe Eddie thought it was some country clown having fun with an out of state driver. Or maybe he knew right away what it meant. They said it was easier to die with whisky in your belly; for Eddie’s sake I hoped it was.

  “Yeah,” I said, shivering in the phone booth, the receiver still in my hand. The doctor had hung up already. I wished I could get Eddie out of my mind as easily as that.

  I went back to the station and Gus said, “MacIvers called from the hospital.”

  My gut tightened. It had to be important for MacIvers to call me. Gus paused to dig the knife in deep. He thought he was digging in the knife. “Looks like the Chief will be back on the job in no time. MacIvers says he’s coming out of it.”

  I had forgotten about MacIvers’ good-guy abortions, but his voice was still harsh with dislike when he came to the phone. “You wanted me to call you immediately there was something,” he said. Today everybody was pausing more than a cast of soap opera actors. MacIvers’ pause was to let me know I was a blackmailer.

  I was patient. “Yes, doctor,” I said.

  “It looks like Chief Kinch has a good chance for partial recovery,” MacIvers said. “He recovered consciousness about an hour ago. Still too early to know, but you wanted to know.”

  “Can he talk?”

  MacIvers said he could and I hung up before he could start about no visitors. Kinch was going to live, for a while anyway, and maybe what I really wanted was Kinch dead.

  “What did I tell you?” Gus said.

  I took two APC tablets for my head and with all that junk in them they’re supposed to make you feel better than you ever did, but when I came out of the john after splashing water in my face, if anything I felt worse. Gus was on the phone talking to Theodora Ambrister. Before he waved the phone at me, he said, “Officer Greeley’s right here.”

  “Tell her to use a corn-holer,” I said viciously.

  Grinning at me, Gus said, “Officer Greeley said you should use ... he says he can’t come to the phone right now.”

  Like the old farmer joke—“Ayeh, Operator, I know it’s a long distance to California”—Mrs. Ambrister was so mad, she could have done without the telephone. Gus held the phone away from his ear and when she finished ripping into me, he said, “Well I appreciate that, Miz Ambrister. Thank you, Miz Ambrister, I’ll tell him.”

  “Don’t tell me, Gus,” I said. “I don’t want to hear about it.” The call from MacIvers had rattled my nerves enough to want a drink. Now that Kinch was medically alive I had to make up my mind.

  Gus told me anyway. “Theodora thought you’d make a fine Chief. Now she isn’t so sure, mildly put.” The clown, not knowing how close he was coming to a slap in the mouth, was straining his brain with another country witticism when the phone rang again.

  “Why hello there, Mr. Albergo,” he said. “I recognized your voice straight off.”

  I took the phone, thinking again that the time had come to make up my mind. Looking for alternatives I found none. Gus was listening; I said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Albergo?”

  Albergo was brief: “Good news I hear about the Chief. So what’s it going to be? Does the Chief get a happy retirement or the other? Listen. We got to have a meeting, not tomorrow, tonight. Urgent business in Boston, got to leave first thing in the morning, back in a couple days.”

  “I need more details, Mr. Albergo,” I said.

  Albergo had a chuckle like a rattler’s tail, or maybe the phone made it sound that way. “That’s good, I like that,” he said. The meeting would be at a motel forty miles away on the other side of the New Hampshire line. “No more meets in town, Chief. See, pal, we got to protect your image.” I got the name of the motel, where it was. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It belongs to us. Make it an hour, huh?”

  I made up my mind and whether or not it worked depended on a number of things. It could be made to work if hoods still thought like hoods, if I played it right and was believed. One more time I looked for alternatives and found them missing.

  “I’m going out, you stay here,” I told Gus.

  “When...” he started to say.

  “When you see me,” I said.

  This time I didn’t take the cruiser. I took it but not far. I put it in the garage we hardly ever use and started the engine of the old unmarked Chevy we use only in summer when the speeders are thick. The town got it for Kinch after one particularly gruesome Fourth of July weekend, and even after months of sitting cold in the garage it started on the second try. It had a souped-up engine courtesy of Ira Mullins and cement blocks in back to give it weight. Black and old and fitted with French racing tires, it could cruise at ninety and, on a good road, you didn’t have to sweat it at one-twenty.

  Going out to the hospital I chased a guy doing seventy-five in a sixty mile zone and passed him like a gust of wind. MacIvers knew I was coming and when I got there he was standing around looking fierce. “No more than five minutes, you hear me?” he said, his way of having the last word.

  Kinch was down the hall in a private room, and he looked dead until he opened his eyes. Then he looked like a dead man with his eyes open. His breath was light and shallow, the air that went in and out barely moving his chest. An old man at sixty, he looked much older now, gray and wasted, the skin stretched tight on his horsy face. I guess the word he croaked was my name.

  “Don’t try to talk yet,” I said. “What I’m going to say you know already. Listen, Wesley, I can handle it. You understand what I’m telling you?”

  The old eyes blinked a signal at me. There was furtive old man’s panic when I started about Albergo. I patted him on the arm, told him to slow down. It didn’t take long—Albergo, the twenty thousand, the big takeover. Stacy was just a supporting player, so I left her out of the credits.

  “That how it happened, Wesley?” It was hardly a necessary question.

  He couldn’t turn his head; his eyes moved away from me. Suddenly I remembered how I hated the smell of hospitals. Kinch’s voice had a weak, droning quality, the Maine country accent erased by sickness; the body and the personality worn away. The thing in his head had done something to his mouth; the sixty-year-old muscles were letting go. But I understood him, “Happened that way,” he said, the words coming out like a man pushing boulders. “Weak in the head—crazy. Ha!” The Ha was to let me know that Kinch wasn’t trying to cop a crazy plea.

  “Now we got two crooked cops on the force,” I said, all I could do, not much, to make him feel better.

  “Been lying here thinking about it,” Kinch said. “What I did after thirty years. Better off dead. Ha. They won’t let me. Lying here thinking about it ... Call the F.B.I. and I’ll make a statement. The hell with me...”

  The old man was beginning to wander; there was no use wearing him out with more talk. I didn’t need MacIvers to tell me that Kinch wasn’t long for this world. A few months, a year; I wanted the time he had left to be easy. As easy as it could be for a dying old man without hope.

  “No F.B.I. Can’t let you do that, Wesley.” I said. “Two-hand pinochle wouldn’t be the same without you. Let me handle it. The next time I see you they’ll be gone.”

  For a moment, Kinch’s faded blue eyes were alive. “Sorry I got you into this. Watch yourself, boy ...” The wrinkled eyelids drooped and Kinch was asleep.

  I had to go back through town to take the road west to New Hampshire. One more stop before I went to listen to Albergo. I stopped in front of the hardware store, then walked down the street and came back quickly. The door was locked, but some light showed from the storeroom in back of the counter. I had to knock and rattle and yell before old Donaldson came to let me in. He had a clipboard in one hand, a pencil in the other. “What’s so important that won’t wait?” he asked.

  “I was going by, thought I smelled smoke,” I said, following him into the store. “Maybe it’s just imagination. You got a lot of stuff stored back there.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” Donaldson said, but hurried to look in the storeroom. I was polite. It was his store, his place to look; and when he turned his back I reached over and took a box of shotgun shells from the shelf and put it in my pocket. Then, sniffing like a retriever, I followed him into the storeroom.

  “You think you smell anything?” I said.

  Donaldson was eager to get back to his stocktaking and I wanted to be gone. “No, I don’t think I smell anything,” he said, using the pencil and the clipboard to tap out his irritation in Morse Code. “Greeley, don’t you think I’d know if my own store was on fire?”

 

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