“Yeah,” Russell said, “yeah. He’s so careful, how much’d you do the last time he got something set up for you? About sixty-eight months, am I right?”
“Five and a half,” Frankie said. “That wasn’t his fault. He did time too, don’t forget.”
“Forget nothing,” Russell said. “He was the guy that set the thing up, wasn’t he? And now he’s got another bright idea. Okay. But me and Kenny, you give me another week with Kenny and we’ll have ourselves about twenty good dogs, and I guarantee you, the coke’ll be there and I’ll be where the coke is and I’ll have the money and I am on my fuckin’ way. One month from today I got a Moto Guzzi and no shit from anybody.”
A silver train pulled in from Cambridge. The red panel on the front read: QUINCY. It blocked the view of the heavyset man as he finished removing the E in SOUTHIE and started on the E in EATS.
“So I guess you’re not coming, then,” Frankie said.
“Look,” Russell said, “go and see the guy. See if you can get him to tell you something about it. I’ll be around. You find out what it is, you’re still interested, don’t matter to me. You decide, you want to do it, it’s all right, I’m in. Without knowing. He still wants me out, I’m out. I’m not gonna waste the whole afternoon on it, though. That I’m not gonna do.”
3
“He’s getting laid,” Frankie said. “He said he hadda choice between coming down here and getting laid, and he decided to get laid.”
“Can’t blame a guy for that,” Amato said. “Somebody put one like that up to me today, I probably wouldn’t be here myself. So, I assume you’re still in for it, who else’re we gonna get? You think of somebody?”
“I didn’t,” Frankie said. “I don’t know, he’s still interested. He didn’t, the only reason he didn’t come down here, he said if you wanted him to come in on it, okay, he’d come in on it. And if you didn’t, okay, no hard feelings, he’s doing all right.”
Amato was silent. Then he said: “Frank, I just don’t like the guy, you know? I just don’t like him.”
“He’s all right,” Frankie said. “He comes on kind of strong when you first see him, but he’s basically all right. And he’s very, very stand-up.”
“Which, after the Doctor, we could both use,” Amato said.
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “I wouldn’t mind running into that son of a bitch some time again when I felt good.”
“I don’t think you’re gonna,” Amato said. “Nobody’s seen the Doctor for a while, the way I get it.”
“That so?” Frankie said. “I wonder where he could’ve gone.”
“Well,” Amato said, “you know, it’s hard to say. He was in San Francisco, he was in the service. He was always saying, he’d like to go back there some time. He said it was too cold, it got too cold for him around here.”
“That’s probably where he went, then,” Frankie said.
“Yeah,” Amato said. “Of course, this was Dillon, I get this from. He knows a guy.”
“Oh,” Frankie said.
“Dillon don’t look good,” Amato said. “He don’t look good at all. I was in town the other day and I saw him. He looks white, all white around the gills. I didn’t say anything to him, but he don’t look good at all.”
“Dillon’s getting old,” Frankie said.
“We all are,” Amato said. “Look at me, the way I let that little shitbird of yours get to me the other day? I never would’ve done that before. I’m yapping at the kids all the time, for Christ sake. For seven years the only time I see the little bastards’s once a month or so, and now I’m finally home and I’m giving them hell all the time. I’m always fighting with my wife. I never used to fight with my wife. I used to, she was being a big pain in the ass, I used to kind of roll with the punches, you know? Now I don’t. I’m getting old. And I swore, boy, I was in? I swore when I got out I was gonna make every minute count, the rest of my life. You ever get me some place again, I can go to sleep without some asshole shoving his dick through the bars, all right, that’s all I ask. And am I doing it? No. Of course I’m not. I’m just as big an asshole now as I was before.”
“Russell’d get to anybody,” Frankie said. “It’s the way he is.”
“Yeah,” Amato said, “but the way I used to be, I wouldn’t’ve cared if he could piss off everybody inna world, you know? He couldn’t piss me off. If he was right for the job, he’d be right for the job. Screw, I’m not gonna marry the guy. All I want, all I would’ve been thinking about is, is he right for this job, and if I thought he was right, that’d be it.”
“Well,” Frankie said, “you change your mind or something?”
“I dunno,” Amato said. “I been asking around about him. You know, not too many guys and all, I don’t want it to seem like maybe I had something in mind. That I don’t need. But, well, I’m afraid, I’m afraid he’s not the kind of guy we oughta have in on this. You go around this thing inna wrong way, you could get somebody hurt, and I don’t want that. There’s no reason for that, you know? You hit somebody, you’re not gonna get any more money or anything. It’s just, it don’t make no sense. You got to have guys that can, that’re not going to go haywire or something, is all.
“These people,” Amato said, “these’re not the kind of people, that’re around a bank or something, they expect maybe some day a guy or somebody’s gonna come in there and try to rob them and, it’s not their money, people tell them, how they oughta act. They’re not that kinda people at all.”
“Heroes,” Frankie said.
“Heroes,” Amato said. “They’re a different kind of guys, and they’re liable, some of them, you never know when one of them’s gonna do it, go right off his ass and start making trouble and then you got to fuckin’ shoot somebody, for Christ sake. Some of them, they think they’re pretty hot shits. Somebody comes in there that’s not absolutely cool, well, that they can see right off doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s not taking no shit off anybody that wants to fuck around with him, well, then it’s gonna be different. Bad, different.”
“You’re not gonna promote that North End thing to me again, are you, John?” Frankie said.
“The barbut?” Amato said. “Nah, this’s different. Although I got to say, I still think you could do that thing if you thought about it long enough and you went in there with the right type of guys, knowing what you’re doing. A few guys, some day somebody’s gonna knock that thing off, and then he’s gonna have a whole lot of money. A whole bunch of money.”
“I wanna meet that guy, afterward,” Frankie said. “I think probably, I’m ever gonna meet him, I better meet him quick, is what I think. Fuckin’ thing. You ever look that thing over? There’s a guy on the corner in the phone booth. Funny how come the phone company put that thing right there, huh? And then there’s always a guy that’s sitting up in the window and looking out at the guy in the phone booth. Coldest night in the year, go down there, that guy’s in the phone booth. He’s not doing nothing. I think maybe that’s how he makes his living. I wouldn’t want it, maybe, but it’s fuckin’ steady’s what I think. You wouldn’t even think anybody’d go out, and there he is, and then there’s that alley and I bet there’s not more’n fifteen heavies in that room with the pieces all set to go.”
“There’s still a lot of money in there,” Amato said.
“ ‘So much money they lose it, they lose the dice in it some times,’ ” Frankie said. “ ‘You go in and you get it, they’re never gonna be able, report it, no government types chasing you around, you just go down past Billy’s Fish and up the stairs and you’re set for life.’ Yeah, and Dillon gets better so fast you wouldn’t believe it, I bet, and fifty guys helping him, too. I been hearing about that place since, I think I was about fourteen when I first hear about that place,” Frankie said. “The thing of it is, all that time, nobody ever did it. I wonder how come.”