Роберт Паркер - All Our Yesterdays

“No,” Chris said.

Gus turned and leaned against the wall beside the back window. The kitchen had exposed beams. There were dried herbs hanging from them, and copper pans that showed no sign of use.

“My old man fixed it, so that nobody knew — about the kid.”

“What was the crime?” Chris said.

Gus shook his head.

“I gotta tell it in order,” he said.

Chris nodded. The automatic ice maker in the refrigerator cycled on and rattled some ice crescents into the storage container. Gus glanced toward the sound and then looked back at his son.

“The kid, Tommy, went on to grow up and marry and have kids and be a big deal in the family bank. But my old man kept the evidence in a safe deposit vault in a bank on the South Shore, and he blackmailed Hadley for the rest of their lives. When he died he left me the story and the safe deposit key.”

Outside the kitchen, the late afternoon had darkened. Chris got up and turned on the overhead light. It thickened the outside darkness, and the room seemed smaller around them. Chris sat down again. He finished his second bottle of beer. Gus swirled the ice around in his glass.

“And?” Chris said.

“And I been using it to blackmail Tommy,” Gus said.

Chris pushed his beer bottle away from him and folded his arms on the table and leaned forward as if to rest his chin on his folded forearms. Then he paused and sat back up straight and looked as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Finally he folded them and rested them on the edge of the table. He took in a long, slow breath and let it out.

“So what’s this got to do with the Malloys and the O’Briens?” Chris said.

“I been taking money from both of them since I worked out of the old City Square station, thirty years ago. Not so much, pocket money, routine street graft. And as I got promoted where I could do them more good I’d get like a raise.” Gus smiled. “Get a raise from the cops and a raise from the robbers.

“Mostly they were doing loan sharking, numbers, truck hijackings,” Gus said. “They hustled a little pot, some heroin, but mostly they stuck to strong-arm stuff, until around 1983-84 when crack came along. Coke was upscale, but crack was for everybody. Butchie and Patrick saw the mass-market potential a long time before the Guineas did. Between them, they got control of all of it, north of Columbus Avenue and east of Mass Ave.”

“White Boston,” Chris said.

“More or less. And the Jamaicans got the ghetto.”

“I’m surprised the Italians would give it up.”

“They didn’t have much choice,” Gus said. “When they don’t fight with each other, Patrick and Butchie are pretty much of a load. And Butchie knows how to deal. Patrick was always a loose cannon. But Butchie... Butchie says to the Guineas, We’ll do it whether you like or not, because you can’t stop us. But as a sign of respect, we’ll pay you a royalty of such and such.’ And the Guineas say, ‘Butchie knows how to treat a man,’ and they take the royalty and everybody’s happy.”

“So where do you come in? And Tom?”

Gus took a drink. If it affected him he didn’t show it.

“So now Butchie and Patrick got all this cash they got to do something with. I mean it’s coming in a million, million and a half a week. Five, six million a month. Cash. They gotta launder it. They try smurfing it for a while, but there’s too much. They need a bank and they consult me, because I’m an upstanding motherfucker and probably know a lot of bankers.”

Gus drank.

“And you did,” Chris said.

“Tommy Winslow.”

“And, even better,” Chris said, “you had something on him.”

“Bingo,” Gus said.

Chris blew his breath out.

“Jesus, Dad. Drug money.”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “Anyway, I talked with Tommy, and he was scared as shit of getting into bed with a couple of bone breakers, but” — Gus shrugged — “he arranged for both Butchie and Patrick to buy numbered CDs at the bank, and the bank would then lend them the amount of the CDs back. That way anybody looking at the bank records could see that the loan was collateralized by CDs. And Butchie and Patrick would buy apartment houses, and Laundromats, and self-storage lockers, which would generate clean money. And anyone looking at Butchie’s finances, or Pat’s, could see that the money came from a legitimate loan. And, because it was a loan, they didn’t have to pay taxes on it.”

“And only Tommy knew the identities of the people with the numbered CDs,” Chris said.

Gus nodded.

“And, let me guess,” Chris said. “The bank filed CTRs, and kept a copy on file. But they didn’t send the original to the IRS.”

“Probably,” Gus said. “Or they exempted Butchie and Pat. I don’t know. I never cared much about the details, long as it worked out. And it worked out dandy until some asshole scragged Corky O’Brien for looking at his girlfriend, and everything unraveled.”

“What did you get out of it?”

“Besides the pleasure of doing good? I got two points on everything they laundered.”

Chris thought about it for a moment and then whistled soundlessly.

“That’s high,” he said.

Gus nodded.

“They didn’t have to give any to Tommy,” he said.

Gus got up and poured himself another shot and got another bottle of beer.

“So what was Tommy’s crime?”

“Forty years ago my father covered up the fact that Tom Winslow molested a thirteen-year-old girl. He bit her on the ass and raped her. Then he shot her and dumped her in the basement of a church in Charles-town with a teddy bear in her arms.”

Chris stared at his father. They were both quiet while Chris thought about what Gus had said.

Then Chris said softly, “Jesus Christ!”

Neither of them spoke for a time. Chris got up and mixed Gus another drink, and opened himself another beer.

“So why are you telling me all this stuff now?” Chris said.

“Because I’m turning myself in to you, Special Prosecutor. I’m blowing the fucking whistle on the whole fucking deal.”

“You could have done that anytime,” Chris said.

Gus shrugged.

“You’re doing it now because Flaherty’s going to fire me.”

“Well,” Gus said, “Patrick’s dead. Butchie goes up for money laundering. The gang wars are over. The special prosecutor did a hell of a job. Flaherty can’t fire you.”

“I can’t let you go to jail,” Chris said.

Gus grinned briefly. “I can cop a plea with the special prosecutor.”

Chris shook his head.

“Walk away from it,” Chris said. “You must have money. Get the fuck out of here. Go to Seattle. I’ll do something about Tom Winslow. I can’t let you just blow yourself up for me.”

He was pacing slowly back and forth in his narrow kitchen, his jacket off, his hands in his back pockets. Gus nodded. Chris paused at the counter and gestured at the bottle of Scotch. Gus shook his head.

Chris said, “Me either,” and went back to pacing.

“What about Ma?” he said.

“She sees this as something I’ve done to her. I knew she would.”

“You’ve talked to her.”

Gus nodded.

“She can’t” — Chris tossed his hands — “she can’t deal with this.”

“I’ve left her,” Gus said.

Chris paused in his pacing again. He looked at his own reflection in the dark window over the sink. He shook his head.

“Well, I gotta give you credit,” Chris said. “You decide to revise things, you go full fucking bore.”

“There’s another woman,” Gus said.

“Your friend,” Chris said.

“No... Laura Winslow.”

Chris turned slowly from the window. He took his hands from his back pockets and folded them across his chest as he gazed at his father.