“Hell, Barry,” Steve said, “I mean, nobody could recognize you. What’s the matter, I thought Ginny trusted you.”
“She does,” Barry said, “because she knows I don’t do that.”
“Well,” Steve said, “look, he probably didn’t say he was you very much anyway. And the girls he meets, they probably don’t even hear the name. They’re just out to get laid. It’s always, he’s the head of the fuckin’ Mafia. He’s got this whole routine he goes through. ‘Just in town for a couple days. I’m in and out of town a lot.’ He is, too. Except the nights he runs the game, he’s here, he’s in Danvers, he’s in Lawrence, he’s all over the place. Then he pulls out this big roll. He’s got himself about eighty fifties there, and it’s nothing but fifties, either. And he’s got the rings. And then pretty soon: I’m staying with a guy. Can’t take no chances onna hotel, you got to sign everything. Can we, can we maybe use your place?’ And of course the broad, she hasn’t got a place. Well, she’s got one, but the old man and the kids’re there, and besides, she don’t want nobody to know she’s from around here. So the next thing you know they’re in a hotel and the broad’s paying for it. ‘He can’t take them to his place,’ Dillon told me. ‘There’s no bugs in there, for Christ sake. Bug’d be ashamed to live in that place.’ But he’s got the Cad and the gold rings and he goes around telling broads all kinds of things and they all believe him and he fucks them all. He’s done more for the world’n Christmas, you add it all up.”
“Why’d you say that about Danvers?” Barry said.
“Because he goes there,” Steve said. “There’s this club he goes to some times, up in Danvers. He goes over the Beach, too. The guy gets around.”
“Ginny’s ma lives in Danvers,” Barry said.
“I doubt he fucked Ginny’s ma, Barry,” Steve said. “You wanna know, though, I’ll call her up and ask her for you.”
“Some day I’m gonna break your fuckin’ long nose for you, Steve,” Barry said.
Trattman, wearing a mouse-colored, double-breasted overcoat, emerged from the Lobster Tail with a dark-haired woman in her forties. He raised his right arm, using his left hand to guide her toward the curb. An attendant in a snorkel coat pulled up in a tan Coupe de Ville. Trattman opened the passenger door for the woman as the attendant got out on the driver’s side. Trattman closed the passenger door and walked around the front of the car. He handed a folded bill to the attendant. The attendant said: “Thanks,” with no sign of recognition. Trattman got into the Cadillac.
Steve and Barry got into Steve’s metallic blue LTD hardtop, black vinyl roof, and shut the doors.
The Coupe de Ville headed east on Boylston Street. It crossed the intersections at Hereford, Gloucester, Fairfield and Exeter streets on green lights. Steve kept the LTD three car lengths back, one lane to the right. He went through the Fairfield and Exeter intersections on yellow lights.
“This isn’t a bad car either,” Barry said.
“You ever decide,” Steve said, “stop fuckin’ around and do something, you can get something for yourself instead of bitching all the time about how everybody else’s got something and you don’t.”
“Fuck you,” Barry said. “Last month I hadda lay out close to two hundred and fifty bucks for the fuckin’ dentist. Every time I get a couple bucks ahead, something comes along to fuck it up.”
The Cadillac stopped for a red light at Dartmouth Street.
“I must be gettin’ old,” Steve said. “All my friends’re having trouble with their teeth. Jackie was telling me, his wife’s all hot and bothered, she’s gotta have, what’re those things, root canals. ‘Which is gonna set me back about nine hundred bucks, I suppose, I’m through.’ I didn’t know stuff like that cost so much.”
The light at Dartmouth changed and the Cadillac moved forward. The woman in the Cadillac moved closer to Trattman.
“He’s telling her what he’s gonna do to her now,” Steve said.
“The thing that really did it to me,” Barry said, “you know what that son of a bitch whacked me for Maine? Five hundred a day and expenses. I hadda pay him almost thirty-nine hundred dollars. Plus what I hadda give him before, a thousand, take the case in the first place.”
The Cadillac had green lights at Clarendon and Berkeley. The Caprio car went through on yellow.
“That’s because you’re a stupid shit,” Steve said. “No asshole inna world would’ve gone up there the way you did. You, you haven’t got no complaint. I think he did all right by you. You had anybody else, you would’ve gotten hooked again.”
The Cadillac stopped for a red light at Arlington Street.
“I’m not putting the hammer on Mike,” Barry said. “He’s just expensive, is all.”
The light changed and Steve followed the Cadillac, turning right on Arlington Street. A man in a light gray Chesterfield, carrying a briefcase, crossed the street in front of the LTD, walking fast and catching up with a tall albino man who wore a lavender cape lined with red satin, and platform shoes. Steve Caprio changed lanes to the right and closed the distance between the LTD and the Cadillac.
“Looks like he’s going down the Envoy,” Steve said. “Must’ve got a cheap one this time, gotta pay for it himself. No, I was just saying, ah, it’s the same thing. You just fuck around too much. You did something, you could get something. You don’t see me or Jackie going up to Maine and being stupid like that, chasing guys around when they’re staying with their families and stuff.”
“Well,” Barry said, “he wasn’t gonna pay. He took the dough off of Bloom and then he wasn’t gonna pay it back. Bloom hadda get his dough outa the guy. You can’t go around letting guys get away with stuff like that.”
The Cadillac moved into the left lane at the Statler Hilton and turned left.
“No, he’s not going down the Envoy,” Steve said. “He’s going down the Terrace. She must have some dough after all. Sure, and Bloom gets his dough, and you get, what’d Bloom give you for that shitty thing?”
“Six hundred,” Barry said. “I needed the dough. Ginny was starting to get the caps, there, and that was the first time I hadda pay.”
“Six hundred,” Steve said. “So, you only lost about thirty-two, forty-two hundred on it. Bloom give you what Mike cost you?”
“Nope,” Barry said.
The Cadillac went into the Terrace Hotel garage.
“Nope,” Steve said. “You ask him for it?”
“Nope,” Barry said.
“Sure,” Steve said. He parked the LTD half a block from the garage and turned off the ignition. “So, you almost go to jail again, and you spent on that what I spent on this car. That’s what I mean. Sooner or later you’re gonna have to start picking your spots, like I do. Otherwise you’re gonna spend the rest of your life tryin’ to get out of things that you shouldn’t’ve got into in the first place, and you’re never gonna have nothin’.”
“Look,” Barry said, “okay, you got all this talk and shit for me, lemme ask you this: you’re doing so good, how come you’re still going out and beating guys up, huh?”
“It’s not the money,” Steve said. “You wanna see how much money I got on me, right this minute?” He moved on the seat, reaching for his wallet.
“No,” Barry said.
Steve relaxed. “I got twenty-one hundred bucks on me right this minute,” he said. “I don’t owe nickel one on this car and I sent Rita’s check to her the other day. No, I’m doing a favor for a guy. This thing come up, Jackie’s done some things for me when I couldn’t do them.…”
“Jackie don’t beat guys up,” Barry said.