Gerry Tillinghast from Providence stops by the hideout. He is a good-looking man, stands six feet, weighs a trim 225 pounds. His reddish-brown hair is fashionably long, and his beard and mustache are neatly kept. He has broad shoulders and big, unexpressive blue eyes. He doesn’t talk much because he doesn’t have to. His presence is a kind of brutality. It intrudes on the room. He’s a hard guy, a bone-breaker, and, at twenty-nine, a killer working on a major league record. Tillinghast is the youngest guy in Chucky’s crew and probably the meanest. Only Flynn is tougher.
Tillinghast’s light specialty is shaking down unprotected bars. He’ll walk in late on a busy night, quickly knock the bartender around, and beat up a few patrons. It’s all very fast and, considering the violence involved, pretty damned smooth, in and out in less than two minutes—no serious injuries, no major ruckus, and no outright police attention. After one or two visits, the owners pay him not to stop by. He has done prison time for assault and battery, then a stretch for conspiracy to commit murder. Those are only the crimes he has been tagged for.
The quietest guy in the house is Tillinghast’s friend, Ralph “Skippy” Byrnes. He is pleasant, friendly, well-spoken, and watchful. He’s just enjoying the scene. He does not fit, to Deuce’s way of thinking, and the gunman usually has a pretty good fix on such things. Chucky says Byrnes has no police record whatsoever. He’s just a manic poker player who got way in over his head a few nights running at St. Pius Social Club in Cranston, across Narragansett Bay.
Two more men enter the house together. One is tall and lanky; the other is squat and shorter by almost a foot. That’s Lawrence M. “Mitch” Lanoue from Woonsocket, Rhode Island—five feet four inches tall, 140 pounds, all muscle, with a crushed hat pulled down to his ears. He gives Deuce a big toothy smile and extends his right hand. At fifty-four he’s the old man on the crew. He also is excitable and a bit unpredictable. He is talkative, a legitimate charmer when need be, and well-spoken, but with a thick French-Canadian accent.
Lanoue’s buddy is Robert Macaskill from Waltham, Massachusetts, a decent sort, lumbering and good-natured, but standing beside Lanoue he looks like a stork, and that draws Deuce’s attention immediately.
“How the hell tall are you?” Deuce asks.
“Six-three, ’bout.”
“That hasn’t been a problem, huh? People spotting you a mile away or something?”
“Well, my wife, she has me wear costumes.”
“Costumes?”
“Yeah, so I don’t get recognized, you know?”
“You mean makeup and shit?”
“Well, sort of . . . sometimes . . . yeah. And maybe a wig and a real long coat. She wanted me to wear a dress this one time, but I said no.”
“Really?”
Deuce is chewing his lip to keep from bursting out in laughter.
“Yeah. That’s where I draw the line. I wear a dress, she’ll have me carrying a goddamned purse.”
“Good point,” Deuce says. “Women and accessories. You got to know when to put your foot down.”
“Damned straight,” Mack says.
If Deuce had a razor blade or even a dull knife, he’d open veins in both of his own arms.
He corners Chucky in the kitchen and tells him again that the whole idea is bad, that if he had tried very hard, he could not have put together a worse, more unlikely bunch of guys to pull off an important job. He is pleading, which is unseemly.
Chucky is losing patience, which is never a good thing. He says they are good men, his guys, and he owes a couple of them. As for Byrnes, Chucky says John Ouimette wants him in, so that settles it.
Deuce puts up both hands, palms outward, in surrender.