It was like being back in parochial school, except we weren’t smoking in the boy’s room. We were three men inside the social club’s restroom. Me, Tony Two-Times, and Mr. B.
Tony checked the two stalls. “Clear,” he said.
Mr. B turned on all three sink faucets and instructed Tony to flush one of the toilets.
“What about the other two, Boss?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Do that, and the water main will burst. And don’t forget the shower.”
“You have a shower in here?” I asked.
“Practically live here, so I had one installed.” Mr. B motioned for me to join him at one of the sinks. I heard a squelch and the sound of falling water behind the last stall. Tony cursed in Italian because he’d gotten himself wet. Mr. B’s finger pointed to the sink’s running water. He leaned over. “Talk to me here.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“It’s harder for them to hear us over all this water.”
“Them?”
“Cops, the Feds, whoever.”
While I would’ve suggested a walk around the North End, to sitting around the table and serenading the ears inside the walls, outside was no better. First, it was cold. Two, if there was surveillance, it meant guys inside a van with horrendous BO, coffee breath, armed with cameras with telescopic lenses. To compound Mr. B’s paranoia, there might be a guy in a window in any one of the building across the street or on a rooftop, muffler earphones on and the latest tech from Radio Shack in his hand.
“You asked for Tony to be in on this conversation. He’s here, so what is it?”
“When he visited and asked me to look into the thing you were interested in, he said you knew, and you didn’t know where the lost thing was. I want to know one thing and that is, do you know, or don’t you?”
A wry twist of the lips. Mr. B appreciated that I’d picked up the lingo to confuse whoever might be listening. Vague as battleship gray on surveillance tape was subject to numerous interpretations in a court of law.
“I had a hunch,” he said, “but I wasn’t a hundred percent certain. Why?”
“Tell me what you know, so I can be efficient with my time.”
“I got word that he was back in Boston but not my Boston.”
“Where then?” I asked.
“Jumbo Dumbo.”
And there it was—Mr. B believed that his nephew Sal was in Somerville. Jumbo Dumbo was a pejorative for students at Tufts University. I’d asked him if his doubt was whether Sal was alone or with Vanessa, and he said it didn’t matter to him. “Okay,” I said.
Sink faucets ran. Shower water blasted, and Tony walked off to flush another toilet. When Tony had exited the stall, Mr. B said to him, “What’s the matter with you?”
“What?” the giant asked.
“Look at all this steam. You’re using the hot water like you’re at the Copley Hotel, and turning this place into a freakin’ sauna. Think about my heating bill, will ya?”
Tony lumbered off, and I heard one knob squeak and another squeal. I looked at Mr. B. I was at a loss for code and mouthed the words in silence and hoped he could read lips. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is a season on the hill,” he said and tapped his temple as a way of telling me to think about it. Mr. B turned one faucet off and then another and yelled to Tony to discontinue the waterworks. Tony came out from behind the last stall, a towel in his hand, and said, “Any longer in here, and I’d turn into an orchid.”
“Anything else?” Mr. B asked me after he turned the last faucet off.
I waved him closer so I could whisper in his ear. I said what I needed to say. He pulled his head back. “Appreciate the offer, but I can take care of myself.”
I put my hand on his tie. He looked down at my fingers. His eyes met mine.
I said, “The people you’re afraid of, who you think are listening in on you, or the fellas around you in the life are amateurs compared to the people I’m talking about.”
“I’m not afraid of anybody.”
“You should be. Let me help you.”
“What do you suggest?”
“You, me, Tony, and one other person, together and safe.”
“Like I said, thanks but no thanks.” Mr. B excused himself, and Tony Two-Times held the door to the club’s hallway open for him. Mr. B stopped short. He looked to me and asked, “What’s with you?”
I was at the urinal when I answered him. “The sound of water makes me wanna pee.”
Mr. B shook his head. “Like a kid, this one. I’ll meet you by the coatroom.”
As I splashed the mothballs, I cogitated on what he had meant by ‘season on the hill’ and came up with nothing. I zipped up and pulled the lever at the urinal. I visited the sink and used the palm of my hand to solicit some pink soap from inside the globe. I lathered my hands with the slippery soap that smelled somewhere between Camay and Palmolive. I looked at myself in the mirror. Dark circles under the eyes. I needed to dial back on the stress and the sex and take in more sleep.
Then it hit me.
Season. Hill. Winter Hill.
If location meant everything in real estate, the same could be said about territory and organized crime. The concern wasn’t whether Sal was with Vanessa. Mr. B couldn’t care less about her. I had the postcard and official confirmation from the source that their Sally was in Somerville. The problem? The Winter Hill Gang owned Slumerville.
There was an agreement in place between the Irish and the Italians. For the sake of peace, the gangsters who ran Winter Hill and the Italians who controlled New England, with the blessing of the mafia bosses in New York, respected each other’s territory and didn’t violate boundaries. Olive oil and Guinness didn’t mix.
It didn’t make sense to me why Sal would decamp in enemy territory. If Mr. B sent his boys into Winter Hill after Sal, the Winter Hill Gang would notice and take offense, and Mr. B would have to answer to New York. Mr. B was sending me instead.
Bad as it was to contemplate Sal mixed up with drugs and the Calabrian mafia in Canada, there was something even worse to consider. Sal and the Winter Hill Gang together as allies.
There was one other angle.
The worst and most diabolical possibility was that one or all five families in New York wanted to take New England back from Mr. B. If that were the case, the Winter Hill Gang, Mr. B, and Sal were dead as the first snowflake that floated into Hell.