George Higgins - Killing Them Softly

“No,” the driver said.

“You know something?” Cogan said. “Nobody’s ever been up that place. Nobody but Trattman. It’s, it’s just not the kind of place that guys go. Except, I was checking around, Dillon mentioned this guy he knew, he used to know, guy was in Walpole and when he come out, they taught him landscaping, and when he come out that’s what he did, and Dillon said he thought maybe that guy did some work up there. So I called him. There’s eighty-six rooms in that place. It’s way the hell off in the woods, and there’s eighty-six rooms in it, and except for Markie’s game there’s not one single thing going on in that place. In the middle of the week the guys that’re using those rooms’re guys that’re selling things, and they work all night. That’s all they do. I talked to Gordon and he said he, when the place first opened up, he put a couple his girls in there. ‘They went nuts,’ he told me. ‘All they did all night was sit in the bar all by themselves and drink. The only guy they ever saw was the bartender. They’re getting fat and I’m losing dough hand over fist, it was awful.’ The place moves a little on the weekends, but then it’s guys that come in with girls. ‘Or fuckin’ amateurs,’ Gordon said. ‘Between the fuckin’ amateurs and the fuckin’ niggers you can’t do squat anyway these days.’ But during the week? Forget it. Nothing. There isn’t even a regular guy taking action in there, ’s how bad it is.

“Now you think about that,” Cogan said, “and keep in mind, I got absolutely no reason, think the guy’s dancing me around. You think about that for a minute. When’d that game go over? Right around midnight, am I right?”

“Around eleven-thirty, I guess,” the driver said.

“Right,” Cogan said. “They go up there and all, most of the lights’re on. ‘The place does a good business,’ Gordon tells me, ‘it’s full almost all the time. It just don’t do no other business.’ So these kids, if that’s what they are, they go there on the right night and they go to the exact room where it is and they go right in, the door’s open, and they take everybody’s money. How about that, huh?”

“Trattman admitted that,” the driver said. “He said he’d started to get careless. Instead of opening the windows or something they’d taken to leaving the door open a little bit, let the smoke out. He said that.”

“Good,” Cogan said. “But the guy that’s running the games isn’t supposed to get careless, you know? He’s supposed to think about things like that.”

“He was in the toilet when they came in,” the driver said.

“I don’t care where he was,” Cogan said. “He wasn’t doing what he was supposed to’ve been doing, and one way or the other, those two guys knew he wasn’t. And they knew he wasn’t gonna be, and they knew where to find him.”

“Right,” the driver said.

“So,” Cogan said, “for now it don’t matter, Trattman did it or somebody did it to Trattman.”

“It doesn’t?” the driver said.

“Not to Trattman,” Cogan said. “That’s where we got to start. We start with Trattman, and we start real good, too.”

“Now wait a minute,” the driver said.

“I’ll wait a week if you want,” Cogan said.

“I’ll have to talk to him before you go ahead and do, whatever it is you’re planning to do,” the driver said.

“Talk to him,” Cogan said. “I got plenty of things to do. Tell him I said we hadda talk to Trattman and see what he says.”

“He wouldn’t object to that,” the driver said.

“ Really talk to him,” Cogan said. “You can’t do anything else, that I can see.”

“I can tell you right now,” the driver said, “he’s not going to okay anything major just on your suspicions. He’s very concerned about starting something that’ll make things worse than they already are.”

“I know that,” Cogan said.

“The last time we had somebody handled it was against both our better judgment,” the driver said, “and as soon as he got better he went straight to the FBI and started telling lies like you wouldn’t believe. It’s just a good thing for him that the fellow got cold feet when they brought him in to the grand jury. And it cost us a lot of money to make his feet cold, too, I can assure you. So he’s not going to want anybody going overboard on this. Who’s going to do it, you?”

“Do what?” Cogan said.

“Talk, have this little talk with Trattman,” the driver said.

“Well,” Cogan said, “I could. But, I talked to Dillon about this and we think, I better not. Might be better if Markie wasn’t too interested in me right now.”

“He’s going to want to know,” the driver said.

“Sure,” Cogan said. “Tell him, I talked to Dillon and we think, Steve Caprio and his brother.”

“Dillon knows who they are?” the driver said. “He’s used them before?”

“Dillon knows who they are,” Cogan said. “I know who they are. Barry was on the Wasp with me. He’s really kind of an asshole, but he was also, the guy that was the champ had to beat Barry, the light-heavy champ, he hadda beat Barry to get there. Steve’s all right. They’ll do what you tell them.”

“I mean it, now,” the driver said.

“Oh sure,” Cogan said. “I know that. You guys always mean it. You gotta mean it. I understand that. I haven’t been around much myself, hardly at all, but I talk to a lot of guys and I know. Now, how’re we working this? You calling me?”

“I tell you what,” the driver said, “I’ll talk to him and then I’ll see what he’s got to say, and I’ll call Dillon.”

“Okay,” Cogan said. “Then, I assume, you think Dillon’s in good enough shape, he can handle.”

“No,” the driver said. “You said he can’t.”

“Dillon said Dillon can’t handle,” Cogan said. “That’s why you’re talking to me today.”

“Correct,” the driver said.

“So,” Cogan said, “that’s what I mean. You want Dillon to handle, call Dillon. Okay by me. You want me to handle …”

“I’ll call you,” the driver said.

“I’ll call you ,” Cogan said. “I’m out, I’m out a lot. I’ll get in touch with you.”

Steve and Barry Caprio waited together in the doorway of the Hayes Bickford opposite the Lobster Tail on Boylston Street. “I tell you,” Barry said, “I wouldn’t’ve recognized the guy.”

“Jackie said that,” Steve said. “Guy lost some weight and he thinks he’s got a wig or something. He’s also, he’s a pretty sharp dresser now, and he sure didn’t used to be.”

“Must’ve come into a little money or something,” Barry said.

“Probably not,” Steve said, “not what Jackie thinks, anyway. He thinks all of a sudden, guy started spending a couple dollars now and then. ‘Probably come outa the divorce better’n he expected,’ is what Jackie thinks. He used to be the tightest cocksucker you ever saw.”

“Christ sake,” Barry said, “he hadda be. The way he used to chase broads alla time? What’s he been married, about nine times?”

“Dillon thinks three,” Steve said. “Dillon was there. Jesus, Dillon looks like shit.”

“Dillon’ll be all right,” Barry said. “That prick, he’s too mean to die. Ever see his eyes?”

“Not particularly,” Steve said.

“I never saw eyes on a guy like that,” Barry said, “I never saw eyes like that until after I hit them. The first time I saw that guy, I really thought: He’s gonna go over. But he doesn’t. It’s the way he always looks. Those’re bad eyes. He’s gonna die.”

“We’re all gonna die,” Steve said. “Trattman’s gonna die.”