Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

Bubba flipped his own bird at the rear of the Escort as he hopped out of the Hummer and slammed his hand on the hood.

“It’s me.”

“What?”

“It’s me!” he bellowed. “That piece of shit is using me, ain’t he?”

“No, he-”

“He can’t threaten Angie, ’cause she’s connected. So it was me.”

“Bubba, he threatened me. Okay?”

He threw back his head and screamed, “Bullshit!” at the sky. He dropped his head and came around the car, and for a moment I was pretty sure he was going to pummel me.

“You,” he screamed, shoving a finger in my face, “don’t back down. You never have, which is why my second fucking career has been saving your ass.”

“Bubba-”

“And I don’t mind!” he yelled.

A group of kids turned the corner, saw Bubba in full horror tilt, and made a beeline for the other side of the avenue.

“Don’t fucking lie to me anymore,” Bubba said. “Don’t. If you or her lie to me, it fucking hurts. It makes me want to go maim someone. Anyone!” He punched his own chest so hard that if it had belonged to anyone else the sternum would have shattered like crockery. “Stevie threatened me, didn’t he?”

“What if he did?”

Bubba wheeled at the air with his huge flailing arms and spittle shot from his mouth. “I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll fucking rip his goddamn large intestine out and strangle him with it. I’ll squeeze his fucking head until-”

“No,” I said. “Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

“That’s the bind. That’s what Wesley wants. This threat didn’t come from Stevie, it came from Wesley. That’s how the fucker works.”

Bubba bent, took a long breath. He looked like a hunk of granite about to come gradually to life.

“You lost me,” he said eventually.

“I’ll bet,” I said slowly, “that Wesley knows Angie’s connected, knows the only way to get to me is through you. I’m telling you, he gave Stevie the idea to threaten you, knowing that, worst-case scenario, you’d find out, flip out, and get us all killed.”

“Huh,” he said softly. “This guy’s smart.”

A blue and white pulled alongside us and the cop riding shotgun rolled down his window.

“Everything okay, gents?” He looked vaguely familiar.

“Fine,” I said.

“Hey, you, big fella.”

Bubba turned his head, met the cop’s gaze with a grimace.

“You’re Bubba Rogowski, ain’t you?”

Bubba looked off down the avenue.

“Kill anyone lately, Bubba?”

“It’s been, like, hours, Officer.”

The cop chuckled. “That your Hummer?”

Bubba nodded.

“Move it into a space, or I’ll ticket it.”

“Fine.” Bubba turned back to me.

“Now, Rogowski,” the cop said.

Bubba gave me a bitter smile and shook his head. Then he walked out past the cruiser and climbed in the Hummer as the cops watched with wide, satisfied grins. Bubba pulled forward and found a spot large enough to accommodate him about a hundred yards down the avenue.

“You know your friend’s a scumbag?” the cop asked me.

I shrugged.

“That could make you a scumbag by association if you’re not careful.”

I recognized the cop now. Mike Gourgouras, allegedly a bagman for Stevie Zambuca, Stevie sending him by to make sure the message sank in.

“Might wanna consider distancing yourself from a guy like that.”

“Okay.” I held up a hand, smiled. “Good advice.”

Gourgouras narrowed his small dark eyes at me. “You busting my balls?”

“No, sir.”

He gave me a smile. “Be careful in your choices, Mr. Kenzie.” His window rolled up with a whir and then the cruiser pulled down the avenue, beeped once at Bubba as he walked back down the sidewalk toward me, then turned the corner.

“Stevie’s boys,” Bubba said.

“You noticed?”

“Yeah.”

“You calm?”

He shrugged. “I’m getting there, maybe.”

“All right,” I said. “How do we get Stevie off our ass?”

“Angie.”

“She’s not going to like calling in that marker.”

“She has no choice.”

“How do you figure?”

“With us dead, you know how boring her life would be? Shit, man, she’d about shrivel up and die.”

He had a point.

I called Sallis & Salk, only to be told Angie didn’t work there anymore.

“Why not?” I asked the receptionist.

“There was, I believe, an incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

“That, I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

“Well, could you tell me whether she quit or got fired?”

“No, I cannot.”

“Wow. You can’t tell me much of anything, can you?”

“I can tell you this phone conversation is over,” she said, and hung up.

I called Angie at home, got her voice mail. She could still be home, though. She turns her ringer off a lot when feeling antisocial.

“Incident?” Bubba said as we drove over to the South End. “Like an international incident?”

I shrugged. “With Ange, I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“Wow,” Bubba said. “How cool would that be?”

We found her at home, as I’d expected. She’d been cleaning, scrubbing her hardwood floors with Murphy’s Oil Soap, blasting Patti Smith’s Horses through the apartment so loud, we’d had to shout at her through an open window because she couldn’t hear the bell.

She turned down the music, let us in, and said, “Don’t step on the living room floor or it’s your ass.”

We followed her into the kitchen and Bubba said, “Incident?”

“It was nothing,” she said. “I was sick of working for them anyway. They use women for window dressing, think we look hot in our Ann Taylor suits, packing heat.”

“Incident?” I said.

She let out a half scream of frustration and opened the fridge.

“The diamond merchant pinched my ass. Okay?”

She tossed a can of Coke at me, then handed one to Bubba, took her own to the kitchen counter, and leaned against the dishwasher.

“Hospital?” I said.

She raised her eyebrows over the Coke, took a swig. “It’s not like he really needed it, little crybaby. I just backhanded him. A tap. With my fingers.” She held up the backs of her fingers. “How was I to know he was a bleeder?”

“Nose?” Bubba asked.

She nodded. “One tap.”

“Lawsuit?”

She snorted. “He can try. I went to my own doctor and she took a photo of the bruise.”

“She photographed your ass?” Bubba said.

“Yes, Ruprecht, she did.”

“Damn, I woulda done it.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh, thanks, guys. Should I swoon now?”

“We need you to call Grandpa Vincent,” Bubba said abruptly.

Angie almost dropped her Coke. “Are you doped to the gills or something?”

“No,” I said. “Unfortunately, we’re serious.”

“Why?”

We told her.

“How’ve you two managed to stay alive this long?” she asked when we finished.

“It’s a mystery,” I said.

“Stevie Zambuca,” she said. “Little homicidal wack-job. He still have the Frankie Avalon ’do?”

Bubba nodded.

Angie swigged some Coke. “Wears lifts.”

“What?” Bubba said.

“Oh, yeah. Lifts. In his shoes. Has them done special by this old cobbler in Lynn.”

Angie’s grandfather, Vincent Patriso, had one (and some said still did) run the mob north of Delaware. He’d always been one of the quiet guys, never mentioned in the papers, never labeled Don by anyone in the legitimate press. He’d owned a bakery and a few clothing stores in Staten Island, sold them a few years back, and divided his time between a new house in Enfield, New Jersey, and one in Florida. So Angie knew her way around the cast list of Boston wise guys pretty well-could, in fact, probably tell you more about most of them than their own capos.