I’d slept like a politician with a conscience. I tossed and turned most of the night, kicked the bedsheets off, and then pulled them back up. Bonnie lay still despite my movements. At some hour, my eyes opened, and I found Delilah staring at me through the darkness like the jungle cat I’d seen years ago. Shoulders hunched, her head forward, eyes intent on me.
I heard the beep. My hand groped the nightstand for the pager. Dot didn’t man the switchboard at that hour, so it would be another operator answering my call, and it seemed adulterous to talk with another woman when I called for my message. This page had to be urgent, and I thought of all the pagers, and all the doctors pulled from their beds for deliveries and surgeries, homicide detectives roused to a scene, or the million men with mistresses.
Operators all sounded alike. Almost.
Hunter had identified Dot as an Ohioan. The gal on the line with me was as native as they came—a hoodsie from Southie, the kind of thoughtful young lady who’d run to the packie in white sneakers, pockabook on her shoulder, to buy her old man a six-pack of Schlitz, and then a grinder on her way back to their triple-decker and split the sandwich with him. I asked for my message.
“There are several, all the same, and they came in twenty minutes apart, and all of them from the same caller, Mr. Cleary.”
“How many messages are we talking about?”
“Ten, Mr. Cleary, and he wouldn’t leave a number.”
“All the same message and caller?”
“That’s what I said.”
Definitely not the way Dot would’ve handled this traffic jam, but I wasn’t one to argue with her at four in the morning. She made her bread during the insomniac hour, so respect was due to her. “What time did the first call come in?”
“Two am. and the last one was at three-forty.”
I asked for the name.
“All he gave me was Bill. Does that help?”
“It does. What did he say?”
“Call me.”
Messages at a regular interval meant something bad with a capital B, like B-52 bombers overhead before they dropped pineapples. I verified the time. It was a little after four o’clock, no promise of sun in the sky, only clouds, all of them dark and dreadful as the sensation in my stomach.
I chose gray slacks, matching socks, an unhappy sweater, and an overcoat with a wool shearling collar. I thought of Hunter’s comment and set aside the .38 for my army keepsake, a .45 automatic from the metal box where I kept my papers, pictures, and medals.
I called Bill next. He answered with a hello, and like some old fling I asked, “Can I come over?” He said yes and hung up. Whatever it was he’d seen tonight was serious. Odd hour or not, there was no lilt to his Hello and no bright ring in his Yes. I expected the blank stare for a face and a gun in his hand on arrival.
As a foregone apology, I prepped Mr. Coffee for Bonnie.
Boston in winter before dawn is a beast. Frank Sinatra sang New York City is a city that never sleeps. Boston does, and it remembers everything when it awakens. The city accent may drop its Rs, but this city never forgets to recover, to rejuvenate, and to get revenge.
I walked to Bill’s place. I walked through the darkness before there was sunlight, before there were cars on the street. I didn’t need to be aware of the ice, the icicles, or the frost heaves on the road. I was aware of all the dangers.
I knocked on his door. Without my hearing the chain undone, the bolt thrown, he eased the door open and stepped aside, a nine mil in his right hand. The air in his apartment moved with nervous energy, with the fresh scent of espresso and smoked cigarettes. I peeled off my jacket and took off my hat. He noticed the rig and its inhabitant.
“Forty-five. Smart choice. You must be psychic.”
He invited me into the kitchen, a lit cigarette inside a notch in the rim of an ashtray. The overhead light, a single bulb in a tulip chandelier, was kicked to its highest setting. The tablecloth glared, and I saw two demitasse cups, one empty for me, and the other, full. He told me to sit.
Bill visited the stovetop and returned with the Bialetti to pour me some of that dark ink.
I asked. “Were we right? Same bar. Same three Puerto Ricans?”
“Same guys, same time, and same place, but there were visitors this time.”
“Visitors?”
“Car parked in front of the bar was a Pontiac, but not your typical Pontiac.”
I sipped some espresso. “I’m listening. Pontiac, different how?”
“Sixty-six Grande Parisienne. Black and maintained. Know the car?”
“Can’t say that I do, but an older car in good condition, in this weather, says devotion.”
He took a hit from his Marlboro Red. “It also says out of town, as in out of country.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Top of the line for GM in Canada. I checked the plates. Canadian as Je me souviens.”
I said, “French for ‘I remember.’ Motto for Quebec. What else?”
“Your friend is inside the bar with three Puerto Ricans and two Canadians. Those two Canadians may have driven over the tundra in their ice-breaker of a car, but they didn’t look French to me.”
“Italian?”
“It’s what I was thinking, but it gets better.”
Bill explained that he was observing them from across the street in his car. He was an experienced undercover agent and could hide in plain sight, like a sniper in a Ghillie suit, so integrated into the scenery that a bird would’ve mistaken him for part of a tree.
I said, “There’s more?”
“Yeah. Four cars behind me, there’s another guy.”
“What other guy?”
“Asked myself the same question, when two bruisers stepped out of his Chevy Caprice.”
“Was the color crimson?”
Bill paused. “I’d call it dark red, but yeah, crimson. Anyone you know?”
“Keep talking.”
“These two cross the street and enter the bar. At this point, I’m thinking they aren’t there for pints and a boiled dinner. The place has a large square window, so I can see everything, as if I were at a movie. The Italians do their thing, they hug, and they kiss, and everybody does a round of handshakes, including your boy, and they all sit down. They’re talking and—what?”
I held my hand up. “What about the driver of the Chevy Caprice?”
“In the car, as the lookout.”
I watched Bill light another cigarette. I counted ten butts in the ashtray. He’d been home since two am when he started the calls to Mercury and chain-smoked Marlboros.
“What went down?” I said.
“Fifteen or twenty minutes pass without a sign of disagreement. Dig?”
I did. “Someone crashed their party?”
Bill described how a Cadillac had crept up a side street, and four hitters stepped out. I understood the formation he described. Two stood ready at the rear door, and two would come in from the front. Somebody would give a signal, and these two teams would enter the place. They’d point and spray and work their way toward their targets. A lot could go wrong, but this took study and planning: likely they’d staked the place out and studied it during the day and made their move when the order had come down. It was obvious Hunter had survived, otherwise, the announcement of his death would’ve headlined this conversation.
I asked, “What could you see?”
“Muzzle fire in the night until there was nothing.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited and started counting.”
“Counting?” I said. “Why?”
Bill did the hitchhiker’s thumb. “Because there’s the Italian in a Chevy Caprice behind me.”
“Think he was in on the hit?”
“I don’t think so.” Bill mashed his cigarette into the tray. “Caprice gets out of his car, his piece drawn, and crosses the street double-time. I wait. Not a sound, not one. You know the kind of silence I’m talking about, Shane. It’s dark, and I’m there, watching nobody walk out, certainly not the four from the Cadillac. Chevy Caprice is like the one cockroach left, and what does he do?”
I answered. “He enters the Roach Motel.”
“And he almost checked out.”
“He came back outside?”
Bill described how Joey Cologne emerged a minute later, bloodied and staggering. “He’s walking to his car like he’s ready to drive himself to the local mob doctor.”
I asked. “How far did he make it?”
“Middle of the street, if that. I saw his face until he didn’t have one.”
“Bullet to the back of the head?”
“Yes, and there’s your friend behind him, in all his satanic majesty. He holsters his sidearm and reaches down to his ankle, and takes out a knife. He used it to extract the bullet.”