ON ANY other night, the bar would be mobbed, but with the blizzard just ending and the city shut down, only the losers were here.
Joe Mears sat in a corner booth by the fogged-up front window. He rubbed a hole in the window fog and checked the street. A taxi passed without stopping.
He heard gum pop and turned from the window. The barmaid was there, weight on one hip, cork-lined tray under her arm.
“Need another?” she asked.
Mears looked down at his untouched scotch. The ice had melted. A pile of bills sat by the glass. He pushed some ones at her.
“Don’t come back,” he said.
The bar was called the Onion, which was the third or fourth name it had gone under in the last couple of years. Mears hated the Onion, but he couldn’t seem to stay away, probably because it was the first place he ever really knew when he arrived in Boston.
Mears came in one night to get warm. This was back when Kennedy was President and Mears was sleeping in boxcars in the Brighton freight yards just down the hill, and the Onion was called Chico’s.
Chico’s was wall-to-wall kids, thick smoke, and loud jabber. Chico himself was fat and forty and had a goatee. He said his life’s work was introducing beatniks to Latin jazz. His real name was Wendell.
Mears couldn’t afford a drink back then, but no one seemed to care. The bartender got Mears a beer, then drifted off to smoke a joint with guys setting up microphone stands in the corner. The bartender came back stoned and gave Mears somebody else’s change. The jukebox died and the mikes went on with a burst of feedback. Then three kids read poems about mushroom clouds. It was October ’63.
Mears went in to see Chico one afternoon before the place opened. Chico was eating pork chops, rice, and black beans at the bar.
“I know you,” Chico said. “You been coming around.”
“Yes,” Mears said.
“You retarded or something?” Chico was referring to the ticks and twitches Mears had when his headaches came on.
“No,” Mears said. He explained about the headaches.
Chico cut his chops. “You ought to see a doctor about that.”
“Doctors gave me the headaches,” Mears said. “I was institutionalized.” He used the long word because he was here for a job and didn’t want to seem retarded.
Mears said, “I need work.”
Chico finished his lunch. “Where you from?” he asked.
Mears looked at his shoes.
“Last job?”
Mears said, “I’m not sure.”
Chico chewed. “Hospitals, headaches, blankness. Lemme guess: electroshock. Where?”
Mears touched his temples.
“I mean, what hospital?”
“Up north,” Mears said.
“I got mine at Riggs in ’58. Jimmy Piersall was there too—unless I imagined it. Cured me of practicing law.”
Chico looked at Mears. “How long you been like this, friend?”
“Since I got out. A few months.”
“How much do you remember from before the treatments?”
Mears shook his head.
“Nothing?”
“Pretty much. If I see something I knew before, I can tell it’s familiar. Like church. Church is familiar.”
“The memory loss wears off.”
Mears said, “I guess.”
“You’re from Boston,” Chico said. “It’s the accent.”
Mears washed Chico’s dishes all winter and made enough money to move into a hobo hotel downtown. He spent his days walking around Boston trying to recognize buildings, streets, signs, anything. He usually wound up in a big dark church someplace, and he was happy there. He joined the prayers, felt the Latin coming out of him, though he didn’t know from where. When it got dark, he went to work.
In those days, Chico’s was jumping and the cops raided it weekly. The hipsters thought the raids were a gas. Usually, Mears slid along the wall during the raids, ducked into the john, and squeezed out a window to the alley in back. From the alley he could hop a fence and roll down a steep dirt embankment into the freight yards, where he was safe. On cold nights, Mears would lie still and watch a solitary worker go from track to track with a flashlight, pouring oil on the switching gear. The worker would stoop and light the oil, and it would burn and keep the switches from freezing. On those nights, Mears would hide from the cops and watch twenty little orange fires in the distance.
Sometimes the cops were federal narcs—the USBN—who always singled out white girls with Negro dates and asked them what their parents would think. The girls would respond with pantomime yawns.
Other times it was precinct vice, who came in uniform, broke some chairs, emptied the cash register, and shook Chico down for free shots.
Once in a while, Boston narcs showed up. They scared Mears the most. They didn’t hassle anybody or break anything. They just strode in, four at a time, wearing porkpie hats and trim gray suits. They would wade through the suddenly quiet crowd to one particular guy at one particular table. They always called him by his name, the guy they came for. The guy would stand up and the city narcs would cuff him. When the narcs led someone off like that, no one ever saw the guy again, and word would circulate a few months later that the guy was doing fifteen years at Walpole for heroin.
The beatniks went to Harvard Square to see the movie Breathless over and over just to study and copy what cool looked like. The boys would walk and smoke like Jean-Paul Belmondo and the girls got short haircuts and French bras like Jean Seberg’s, and everybody rode scooters and talked about moving to Paris. To Mears, it all seemed an act. To him, the narcs were cool for real.
Mears first met Bennie Anastasia in the winter of ’64. It was a busy night at Chico’s and Mears was taking a break by the bar. Some BU kid was at the mike reading a poem about Martin Luther King in the Birmingham Jail. Two Negroes next to Mears started heckling the poet. One of them was small and dark. Mears learned his name later: Garrett Hays. The other was lanky and light-skinned. He was Bennie A.
Garrett shouted, “What the fuck you know ’bout Birmingham?”
The kid tried to finish his poem, but Garrett cupped his hands. “Shut the fuck up ’bout Birmingham!” Garrett was drunk.
The kid was rattled. He tried to tell Garrett that he was just “doing his thing,” and that he was “hip to” Garrett, but Garrett mocked him brutally.
“You hip to me, bro?” Garrett was imitating a white person imitating a Negro, and it wasn’t pretty. The whole place got edgy for real, instead of fake-edgy. The kid at the mike slunk away, and Mears never saw him in the club again.
Garrett and Bennie went back to their conversation. Mears, impressed, started listening in. Garrett was demanding money from Bennie and Bennie was squirming.
Suddenly Garrett was looking at Mears. “You mind, Chuck?”
Mears said, “My name is Joe.”
Garrett said, “Yeah. You mind?”
Garrett and Bennie went back to their conversation. They mentioned sums, dates, and weights—clipped phrases, but unmistakable. They were dealing, and Bennie was in the hole.
Garrett was looking at Mears again. “Chuck, what the fuck is the problem? We’re trying to talk here.”
“My name is Joe.”
Garrett gave Bennie a weary look and Mears felt a knife prick just above his belt. Mears looked down at the knife and up at Garrett, who smiled.
Bennie said to Garrett, “I got to go.”
“You won’t stab me,” Mears told Garrett. “Not here. Not over this.”
Garrett goosed the blade. “Yeah?”
Mears said, “You want product, right? Well, I can get anything you want.”
Garrett took the knife away. “Dag, Joe, why didn’t you say so? I nearly cut you. So, who you with? Feds or BPD?”
Mears said, “I’m for real.”
Bennie said, “Garrett, I’m going.”
Mears stayed deadpan. “I’m new to Boston. I don’t know enough people to sell to the streets, but you two do. I can get product. I got a connection in a mental hospital.”
Garrett loved it. “I bet you do.”
Garrett followed Bennie through the crowd, laughing at Mears as he went out the door.
Mears trailed them to the sidewalk and up Cambridge Street. They got to Brighton Avenue and waited for the light. Bennie saw Mears first. He nudged Garrett, who turned.
Garrett said something to Bennie and started back toward Mears. His coat parted and his arms were wide, an open hug. Passing streetlights glinted off the knife in Garrett’s right hand. Mears was ten feet from Garrett’s waiting hug, and closing. Bennie was circling around to where Mears couldn’t see him. Garrett stutter-stepped, right shoulder dipping slightly, knife hand slashing up and across. Mears blocked it with a flying elbow, his hand continuing through Garrett’s arms to his windpipe. Garrett fell.
Bennie was slow and Mears was already pivoting. Bennie took an elbow in the middle of his face and rolled toward the trash cans.
Mears took the knife from the sidewalk and helped Garrett up. Garrett was coughing.
Strangely, Mears spoke now to Bennie—as if Garrett weren’t there. He said, “I’ll prove I’m not a narc or some kind of bullshitter. I’ll prove I’m for real.”
He stepped behind Garrett and hitched the blade under his chin. He backed Garrett down an alley. Bennie followed, wanting to help Garrett, afraid to make a move.
At the end of the alley, Mears stopped. He said to Bennie, “Would a cop do this?” He snapped his wrist and cut Garrett’s throat.
Bennie didn’t speak for a long time after that. Mears led him down Comm Ave to another bar, the Hi-Lite, which catered to a hard-core junkie crowd.
Mears kept talking all the way to the Hi-Lite and was talking when they found a booth deep in back. Bennie finally said, “Shut up. You just committed murder.”
“I heard him at Chico’s,” Mears said. “He wasn’t your friend. He was taking your money. What do you care?”
Bennie said, “Who are you?”
“I was locked up,” Mears said.
“What were you in for?”
Mears turned bitter. “My own good,” he said. “I got a guy who can get me drugs. Anything you need.”
Bennie said, “Man.”
Mears said, “Test me. Do a package. If I can’t deliver, if I ain’t for real, you can tell the cops what I done to Garrett.”
And that was how it all got started, a long year ago.
THE door to the bar swung open and Bennie came in. He didn’t look happy.
“That synthetic shit was supposed to be safe,” Bennie said. He was spilling as much coffee as he drank. He left his overcoat on and bunched a wet beret in his free hand.
Mears said, “What happened?”
Bennie put the cup down on the saucer with a clink. “People are getting sick.”
“I told Caesar it was safe, but strong. He’s got to cut it different, hundred-to-one. I told him.” It was rare for Mears to sound defensive. “How much did he sell?”
“All of it.”
Mears absorbed this. If Caesar had put an entire shipment on the streets, his dope was already in the hands and veins of hundreds of junkies by now. Some of them would have gotten it directly from Caesar’s own organization. Others would have gotten it from middlemen, jobbers, and scalpers who bought bulk from Caesar. Same thing either way. It wasn’t like a batch of bad cars; GM could simply recall cars. This was dope, and it was gone now. There was nothing to do but wait for the damage.
“Caesar’s a clown,” Mears said.
“If people die from this, the cops’ll come down on us all.”
“On Caesar,” Mears corrected. “You want your package, or what?”
Bennie said, “I’m out.” He slurped coffee and snuck a look at Mears, trying to read his face.
Bennie put down the cup. “I been in the middle too long.”
“You mean the narcs?”
“The narcs, Caesar, the junkies, you. I’m everybody’s middleman for everything. It’s too much. So I’m out.”
“Nobody’s ever out.”
“I am.”
“You still gotta live. You gotta eat.”
Bennie put on his hat. “I’ll move to Cambridge. It’s a whole different scene over there. I’ll sell the other shit, the shit we talked about.” His voice made the last statement a question, almost. He was waiting for Mears to react.
“Yes,” Mears said.
“But no more dope,” Bennie said. “I ain’t gonna be in the middle no more.”
Bennie brought an envelope from his coat and slid it to Mears’s glass. It was an even grand in tens and twenties.
Bennie stood up. “Call me when you get the other shit. I’ll leave a number at the Hi-Lite.”
Bennie was gone awhile before Mears put the envelope in his pocket. He was thinking that he had been careful. He had only sold to two customers, avoided the phones as much as he could, made his meets in well-scouted spots, and kept tabs on the narcs. He was careful to be careful, like a double wall between himself and the risks of this business. But Bennie was right: if junkies died, the cops might trace the dope from the streets to Caesar’s network, maybe to Caesar himself, and just behind Caesar was Mears.
Two college girls came in and sat down. They ordered White Russians and talked about the good old days when this bar was really hip. Now it was just so square.
One girl said, “Let’s go to Paris.”
It dawned on Mears that the “good old days” they were talking about were last year.
He made a decision. It was time to leave Boston.
He went out to the street and walked down to the old Brighton freight yards. He hopped a fence to take a better look. On a cold night like this, the switches on the tracks would be burning.