There was one strong, abiding lure that drew Mrs. Tumulty from the bosom of the decent people of South End into foreign quarters. Word had it there was a lot of money around for certain information.
This thing called the "word" was the only thing in Boston that moved freely among groups. Word had it if you knew of someone's special safe, discarded somewhere after a burglary, there was money for it. Word was that any late model pink Lincoln Continental would bring $5,000 or that the whereabouts of someone who had stiffed his neighborhood loan shark could get you $500.
Word in Boston was a tribal drum connecting many different tribes that made up the city.
Word in Boston that day was there was an awful lot of money for a wounded man, a cut-up man, a man cut up badly, almost like the victims from the human animal killer, Dr. Sheila Feinberg, another foreigner.
And about the cut-up man, Mrs. Tumulty knew. Just the other day, a skinny old Chinaman dragged up a bloody young man. He did it in a strange manner. The old Chinaman looked as if he couldn't lift a large potato, but was carrying this larger man like a baby with head over his shoulder and his right hand under the man's backside. The man was moaning. The old Chinaman wore a funny robe and said he saw an apartment-for-rent sign on the door of Mrs. Tumulty's house.
Mrs. Tumulty said she wished no trouble, but the old Chinaman with a white beard scarcely made up of a dozen strands pushed his way through easily.
Of course, there was money and paid in advance too, but then the smelly herbs came. She complained about that.
Here was the strangest part. The man was near death when the foreigner brought him in. By that evening, he was mumbling. By the next morning, his eyes were open. And his skin was healing a lot faster than normal skin.
What sort of black arts were being practiced, Mrs. Tumulty wanted to know. But she didn't press the point. Her boarders in the attic apartment paid well.
However, there had been a powerful stink coming from the rooms. She insisted it would cost more to clean things like the draperies to rid them of the smell. Every time she went to the attic, she tried to see more but the old Chinaman always managed to block her path. There were pots bubbling in there. She knew something really strange occurred because she saw the neck. It was a bloody mess when the Chinaman carried the bigger man, like a sleeping baby, up the steps. When she got a peek at that neck two days later, it was like an old bum. Mrs. Tumulty knew that wounds did not heal like that.
So she listened. From the beginning she listened because who knew what was going on, what with perversity and other sex practices abounding and all that? For a while, he talked in the funny Chinaman's talk, but then used common, decent, civilized English. She heard him telling the man his heart should do this, his spleen should do that and his liver should do this other thing-as though a person could make his body parts do different things.
And one thing he kept repeating.
"Pain never kills. It is a sign of life."
Which was mighty peculiar. But when the man answered back, the Chinaman talked Chinaman talk.
Now was the wounded man the one that word in Boston said was valuable to people?
This question did Beatrice Mary-Ellen Tumulty pose to the foreigner with the little, black, foreign mustache. He was the man she had come into this godforsaken Eyetalian section to see. Kept her purse over her lap all the time too.
Who knew what sexual insanity would overtake these men, their own women getting fat and mustached over twenty-one and all that. Mrs. Tumulty was fifty-three and a bit let out at the seams, she knew, but she had once been a looker and she still had those basic looks.
"Mrs. Tumulty," said the man she had come to the North End to see, "you have done yourself a good service today. I think that is the man who has caused so much trouble to the community. We know and trust you will keep these matters to yourself."
He took a large roll of fresh bills from his pocket. They were twenty-dollar bills. Saints and glory, thought Mrs. Tumulty. The man peeled off one and Mrs. Tumulty's eyes widened as he kept peeling. Two, three, four, five. The bills came fresh and new, down on top of one another, as the hand went back to the roll and came back with another bill. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Would the man never stop? It was delicious.
It drove Mrs. Tumulty to passionate fury. When twenty crisp new bills lay on the table in front of her, she let out a squeal of delight.
"You'll do a small favor now, please?" said the man.
"Anything," said Mrs. Tumulty, delightfully spent as the fresh strong bills went into her purse.
"Please go to this address," he said. "You will meet James Hallahan of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You will get into no trouble. Just tell him what you have told me."
"Absolutely," she said and, in a sudden burst of gratitude, jumped from her chair and kissed the man's hand as she had heard Eyetalians did, don't you know? Just like he was a cardinal of the church or something.
But this man, she realized, was like a cardinal to his people. A leader of his community. A respected person and all she was doing was paying proper tribute.
Men wrestled Mrs. Tumulty away from her adoration of the man's hand. As she left the room, she swore eternal loyalty.
Thus did she meet, that afternoon, Salvatore (The Gas) Gasciano, who not only earned his nickname by the sound of his last name but because he liked to correct injustices and settle disputes with gasoline. He poured it and lit it. Sometimes on buildings and sometimes on uncooperative people.
But that had been in his youth. Rarely now had he set a match to anyone or poured gasoline into a car. He was a man of reason now. A man of respect.
He phoned the local office of the FBI. He got James Hallahan. He knew the lines were bugged. Every FBI office was bugged, his informants had told him. Besides, a man of caution would assume those people kept voice records.
"All right," were the first words spoken by Sal Gasciano. "We got your man. Now will you lay off a little?"
"You sure he's our man?"
"There's a lady coming up to see you. I don't know how many guys in Boston had their throats and bellies ripped last week, but this guy was torn up bad, Hallahan. So stop getting in the way of our business, okay?"
"If he's the one, we will. But I want one more thing."
"Jeezus, Hallahan, what the hell is the matter with you nowadays? We been staying clean on Federal things. Now you're all over us all the time. C'mon, Jim. Enough is enough."
"One more thing. A small thing."
"What?" asked Gasi Gasciano.
"You know Tony Fats?"
"Of course I know Tony Fats. Who doesn't know Tony Fats?"
"There's a large backyard behind Alfred Street in Jamaica Plains. Have him there at four o'clock this morning."
"Four A.M.? Tony Fats?"
"Right. The well-marbled one," came the voice of Jim Hallahan.
"All right, but Tony Fats doesn't know nothing. He just does small things. He's not even connected with people."
"Send him anyway."
"All right," said Gasciano. He hung up and shrugged. Marbled? Wasn't that what you said about good steak? But what difference did it make? The whole world was going crazy. Just so long as the North End remained the same. The same and sane.
Everybody else is crazy. One day, the Feds want everything about some Jewish lady doctor they think is eating people. The next day they don't want to know nothing. Why, he had personally phoned to tell Hallahan to stop looking for one person and start looking for at least four or five. These crazy hits where bellies were eaten out had to be made by several people. They were happening too far in distance and too close in time. His estimate was four or five people, at least.