MANNY waited in back of the church, reading the sports section by the light of the votive candles. The Bruins got shelled by the Maple Leafs, and the game ended in a brawl, which the Bruins lost by an even wider margin. Disgusted, Manny turned the pages noisily. A lady with five kids shushed from a few pews away. Other heads turned to Manny, who sank low. Biff had said this big suburban church was as far away from the dope trade as they could get. Last time Manny would let him pick the rendezvous.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” the priest opened in a pinched tone, startling Manny, who was poring over the Bruins roster.
“Dominus vobiscum,” the priest sang.
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” the altar boys responded.
Mass was getting underway. Nothing like an hour of nasal Latin warbling. Manny thought, I’ll kill Biff for picking this stupid rendezvous.
Biff finally showed, an hour late. He slid in next to Manny. The priest machine-gunned the Nicaean Creed: “Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium….”
Manny started whispering. “You done good so far, Biff, but now you got to take Angel to the next level. You got to get Angel to introduce you to Caesar Raines.”
The priest sang, “Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum…”
Biff glimpsed a genuflecting housewife’s shapely ass. His knees began to jiggle.
“Pay attention,” Manny said. “Any undercover can buy the street. It takes a great undercover to climb the ladder. Go to Angel. Tell him you got money to do a big package. Tell him you don’t want nickel bags, even at a discount. Let Angel know he’ll make out if he hooks you up. But insist: you want weight. Angel can’t swing that on his own. He’ll need to go to Caesar to fill your order. You follow?”
“Sure,” Biff said, watching the sexy housewife purse her lips in silent prayer. “Angel.”
“You done, what? Four deals with Angel?”
Biff added them up on his fingers, lost track, started again. “Yeah,” he said, “four.”
“…Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est,” the priest droned.
“Climb the ladder,” Manny told him, standing up. “Get Caesar. Show him the buy money.”
“Crucifixus etiam pro nobis,” the priest said, “sub Pontio Pilato; passus et sepultus est, et resurrexit…”
Manny handed Biff a fat envelope, and Biff took it.
“Three grand,” Manny said.
BIFF and Angel Chacon sat on the hood of Biff’s Ford in the South End. The BBQ stand was jumping. The elevated train rumbled by.
Angel licked his greasy fingers and chattered about pussy and relief pitching. He was telling Biff that back home he balled showgirls but that America was his number one country now. “Number one,” he exclaimed, raising a wet finger. Biff was nodding fast, adding up the years Angel would do—twenty or so, if the judge ran him consecutive.
“This thing,” Biff said, speaking clearly for his body mike.
“Yeah?”
“This thing.”
“Um.”
“I can’t do bags.”
“Um.”
“Angel,” Biff said, getting the kid’s name on the tape.
“Hm?”
Biff’s thinking: Attaboy, asshole, answer to your name. Biff’s saying, “I can’t make money on bags, see? I pay you four per. My people, they pay five. That don’t cover my trouble.”
“Um.” Angel’s chicken-chewing sounds.
“I’ll need ounces, Ace. One a week maybe. I’ll bag ’em myself.”
Car horns up the block. Biff: “So can you handle me? Or do I gotta go elsewhere?”
“Sure,” Angel says, a lie. Butterman and Hicks had tailed the kid making buys at Gibraltar Street and followed him to a shooting gallery on Harrison. A snitch had been inside the gal. There was no cut, no empty glassine envelopes, no gloves, bowls, strainers, or masks, none of the setup needed to package. Angel bought his dope from Caesar Raines bagged, always. Biff let the fib go.
“Cool,” he said. “We’ll get rich together, amigo.”
Biff came back without warning a day later for his ounce, showing Angel the money in the envelope, Manny’s money.
“Three grand,” Biff said.
Angel kept Biff waiting by the BBQ stand while he scoured the South End trying to scare up weight. But Angel was a kid and lacked that kind of play. He returned an hour later with excuses.
“Mañana,” Angel promised.
“Fuck mañana. Who got?”
“They don’t know you. And I got no credit.”
“They know you, and we don’t need no credit. We got cash.”
We, that seductive Americanism. A proposition: partners, oportunidad. Angel tilted his head to the left, considering. Cars were double-parked outside the spots, waiting to score. Five G’s a minute happened around them, and here was Angel’s big shot to advance from four-dollar bag runner to powdered-ounce middleman, bankrolled by this opportune dad. Dad wasn’t no cop, Angel knew that just as sure as he knew where his ass was—Angel had four deals with him and never took a bust. Angel had a feel for people.
“Okay,” he decided. “But I go with the money alone.”
“Ixnay,” Biff spat. “You can rap. But I hold the green.”
Angel walked him to a barbershop on Norfolk Street. Biff watched him fall all over Caesar Raines. Nobody mentioned dope.
“Help me out,” Angel begged.
A barber stood by with a cup of cream and a straight razor. Bo Norman ate a candy bar in the open doorway. Angel took the envelope from Biff, and showed Caesar what three thousand dollars looked like. Caesar ignored the money and gave Biff the once-over.
Angel blurted, “He’s okay. I know him months and months. We go partners all the time. He knew Garrett. He knows Bennie A.”
Caesar addressed Biff. “You knew Garrett?”
Biff took his money back from Angel and nodded.
“From where?”
“Juvie lockup,” Biff said. “Garrett went in for dope, couple years back, and I was there with him.”
Caesar thought it over. “What did you two talk about?”
“Different things,” Biff said. “I got a sister in a nuthouse, and Garrett’s mom was in one too. Garrett told me about his cousins. He said one was a jailbird and the other was a big pussy.” Biff said this as if he didn’t know Bo and Garrett were cousins. Biff was thinking about the electric fan and the blaring radio, and knew his body mike would get none of this.
Caesar nodded at Bo and returned to his shave. Bo led them outside and told them to wait.
“You sure of this?” Biff asked Angel.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. These guys supply everywhere. I know them way back. They my partners just like you. Don’t worry. They businessmen. They big.”
“Their shit is good?”
Angel quickly blessed himself, four touches, respectful of very pure product.
Biff should have aborted. Bo kept them waiting a long time. He came and went and started asking all the wrong questions, going in and out of the barbershop, using pay phones, stalling. Biff figured they were trying to check him out through the grapevine. Bo told Angel to take a hike, and Angel left. Biff was alone.
Bo finally walked Biff into a shabby brownstone at 5 Norfolk. Swaggering Biff eyeballed the thick walls down the first-floor corridor hoping Butterman, Hicks, LeBlanc, and Scanlon waiting in panel trucks two blocks off saw him leave the street.
“Follow me.” Bo grinned, leading Biff downstairs to a dark basement, and out into an empty lot behind the building.
“Where’s my fucking package?” Biff was demanding as he came up from the basement into the daylight. Caesar was there. He stuck a sawed-off shotgun in Biff’s face. Bo lifted Biff’s snub .32 out of the back of his pants. Bo gave the .32 to Caesar, who handed him the sawed-off. Everybody gulped.
Ceasar reached into Biff’s shirt and pulled out a wire and a tiny microphone. He yanked them free and threw them away. Caesar said, “You are a policeman.”
Bo Norman watched the street while Caesar loaded Biff in a little Chrysler coupe. They snuck out of the South End. Biff had never seen the coupe before and figured his field team wouldn’t recognize it either. As Bo Norman drove north on the expressway, Biff knew the panel trucks would wait another fifteen minutes before getting creeped and only then start uselessly combing empty streets. Biff would be dead by then.
Caesar sat next to Biff in the backseat, snub .32 digging into Biff’s ribs.
“Gimme the money,” Caesar said.
Biff thought fast. “You want this?” he asked Caesar, taking the wad from his jacket pocket. He thrust it out the window and let the three thousand dollars blow off into roadwind.
Greedy Caesar grabbed at the bills with his free hand, reaching past Biff. Biff went for the .32 and got it. Bo, behind the wheel, swerved in and out of oncoming traffic, plowing through a roadside construction site. Biff would lose the pistol to Caesar in a moment, and Bo was fumbling with the shotgun up front. Caesar was twisted across Biff, and Biff’s arm was around him, gun now jammed in Caesar’s left side, Biff on his right. Biff squeezed Caesar’s trigger finger, gambling that the slug would enter Caesar on the far side and slow down before exiting into Biff’s lung. Caesar jumped, organs stopping the bullet, free hand letting the money snow the highway. Biff jammed the .32, angled up, into the soft part of Bo’s neck as Bo tried to steer and bring the sawed-off over the top of the seat. The sawed-off went off in his hands. Biff let a round go, splattering Bo’s screaming face across the windshield.
Biff reached over a slumping Bo and grabbed the wheel. The car slowed. From the backseat, Biff worked Bo’s legs to brake.
BO WAS dead. Caesar wound up in Boston City with a wound in his side. Manny and Shecky went to him there, shooed his nurses, and pulled a couple of chairs up to his bed.
“You know me?” Manny asked him.
Caesar closed his eyes. “You’re the undercover’s boss, I’magine.”
“I am,” Manny said. “I want to nail your source—the guy who sold you that killer dope.”
“You offering a deal?”
“Give me your source, and you plead to the drug sales. No kidnapping, no attempt to kill a police officer, which is mandatory life.”
“And you’ll take care of Bo? Bury him and all. Someplace nice, where his gram can visit.”
“I can do that,” Manny said.
“And Garrett,” Caesar said. “Take care of him too.”
“Garrett’s already buried,” Manny said.
“Garrett Smith, I mean. The child. Bo was moving to Virginia with the child and the boy’s mother.”
“I’ll get them some money,” Manny said. “Enough to get to Virginia. Anybody else, Caesar?”
Caesar had nobody else. “This can’t be traced back to me,” Caesar said.
“Tick-a-lock,” Manny said, making a key-in-keyhole gesture at his lips.
“I ain’t bullshitting.”
“You got my word. Now, out with it.”
“Joe Mears,” Caesar said. “That’s your man. Showed up like maybe a year ago, year and a half. He’s talking about how he’s got connections, how he can pull anything he wants. Morphine, pills, pharmaceutical cocaine, all of that. At first, I didn’t want to know this guy. I thought he was a fucking cop—he was the coppiest-sounding motherfucker I ever dealt with. He tells me he can get synthetic heroin. I’m like, ‘Why not just use real heroin?’ He explains that synthetic heroin’s much purer—you make more money off it.”
“He killed Garrett,” Manny said.
Caesar looked away. “Yeah,” he said.
“That’s when Bo started managing your spot?”
“Yeah.”
Shecky said, “How did you know that Biff was a cop?”
“Mears told me. He’d been saying for weeks that there was surveillance all over Gibraltar. He also said you were following me to meetings with him, or trying to. I thought he was paranoid.”
“When did Mears tell you Biff was a cop?” Shecky asked.
“Just before Biff did the buy, when he was waiting with Bo. Mears was down to see me, and he spotted Biff in the street. He said, ‘He’s a cop.’”
Shecky didn’t understand. “How did he know?”
Caesar said, “Mears has somebody inside Narco. Somebody who tells him what the cops are looking at, what they’re doing.”
Manny had heard enough. “Where do I find this Joe Mears?”
Caesar gave them an address: 10 Gibraltar Street, apartment 33, in the Heights.