“Okay, sure, Ms. Wallace. Okay by me. We weren’t trying to hurt Ms. Wallace or you, man.”
“Who told you to do that?”
“Whaddya mean?”
I shook my head. “You are going to get yourself in very bad trouble,” I said. I reached under my coat and brought out my gun and showed it to him. “Smith and Wesson,” I said, “thirty-eight caliber, four-inch barrel. Not good for long range, but perfect for shooting a guy sitting next to you.”
“Jesus, man, put the piece down. I just didn’t understand the question, you know? I mean, What is it you’re asking, man? I’ll try. You don’t need the fucking piece, you know?”
I put the gun back. We were in Milton now; traffic was very thin in the snow. “I said, Who told you to scare us up on the Lynnway that night?”
“My cousin, man—Mingo. He told us about doing it. Said there was a deuce in it for us. Said we could split a deuce for doing it. Mingo, man. You know him?”
“Why did Mingo want you to scare me and Ms. Wallace?”
“I don’t know, man, it was just an easy two bills. Swisher says it’s a tit. Says he knows how to work it easy. He done time, Swisher. Mingo don’t say why, man. He just lays the deuce on us—we ain’t asking no questions. A couple hours’ drive for that kind of bread, man, we don’t even know who you are.”
“Then how’d you pick us up?”
“Mingo gave us a picture of the bro—Ms. Wallace. We followed her when you took her out to Marblehead. We hung around till you took her home, and there wasn’t much traffic. You know? Then we made our move like he said—Mingo.”
“What’s Mingo do?”
“You mean for a living?”
“Yeah.”
“He works for some rich broad in Belmont.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. Everything. Drives her around. Carry stuff when she shops. Errands. That shit. He’s got it made, man.”
“What’s her name?”
“The rich broad?” Mulready shrugged. His breath was back. I had put the gun away. He was talking, which was something he obviously had practiced at. He was beginning to relax a little. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think Mingo ever said.”
At Furnace Brook Parkway I went off the expressway, reversed directions, and came back on heading north.
“Where we going now?” Mulready said.
“We’re going to go visit Cousin Mingo,” I said. “You’re going to show me where he lives.”
“Oh, fuck me, man. I can’t do that. Mingo will fucking kill me.”
“But that will be later,” I said. “If you don’t show me I’ll kill you now.”
“No, man, you don’t know Mingo. He is a bad-ass son of a bitch. I’m telling you now, man, you don’t want to fuck with Mingo.”
“I told you, Michael. I’m looking for Rachel Wallace. I told you back in the warehouse that I’d break things if I had to. You’re one of the things I’ll break.”
“Well, shit, man, lemme tell you, and then drop me off. Man, I don’t want Mingo to know it was me. You don’t know what he’s fucking like, man.”
“What’s his real name?” I said.
“Eugene, Eugene Ignatius Mulready.”
“We’ll check a phonebook,” I said.
In Milton I pulled off the expressway and we checked the listing in an outdoor phonebooth. It didn’t list Watertown.
“That’s in the West Suburban book,” Michael said. “They only got Boston and South Suburban here.”
“Observant,” I said. “We’ll try Information.”
“Christ, you think I’m lying? Hey, man, no way. You know? No way I’m going to bullshit you, man, with the piece you’re carrying. I mean my old lady didn’t raise no stupid kids, you know?”
I put in a dime and dialed Information. “In Watertown,” I said. “The number for Eugene I. Mulready—what’s the address, Michael?”
He told me. I told the operator.
“The number is eight-nine-nine,” she said, “seven-three-seven-oh.”
I said thank you and hung up. The dime came back.
“Okay, Michael, you’re on your way.”
“From here?”
“Yep.”
“Man, I got no coat—I’ll freeze my ass.”
“Call a cab.”
“A cab? From here? I ain’t got that kind of bread, man.”
I took the dime out of the return slot. “Here,” I said. “Call your buddy Swisher. Have him come get you.”
“What if he ain’t home?”
“You’re a grown-up person, Michael. You’ll figure something out. But I’ll tell you one thing—you call and warn Mingo, and you won’t grow up any more.”
“I ain’t going to call Mingo, man. I’d have to tell him I tipped you.”
“That’s what I figure,” I said. I got in my car. Michael Mulready was standing shivering in his shirt sleeves, his hands in his pants pocket, his shoulders hunched.
“I give you one tip though, pal,” he said. “You got a big surprise coming, you think you can fuck around with Mingo like you done with me. Mingo will fucking destroy you.”
“Watch,” I said and let the clutch out and left him on the sidewalk.
24
Watertown was next to Belmont, but only in location. It was mostly working-class and the houses were shabby, often two-family, and packed close together on streets that weren’t plowed well. It was slow going now, the snow coming hard and the traffic overcautious and crawling.
Mingo Mulready’s house was square, two stories, with a wide front porch. The cedar shingle siding was painted blue. The asbestos shingles on the roof were multi-colored. I parked on the street and walked across.
There were two front entrance doors. The one on the left said Mulready. I rang the bell. Nothing. I waited a minute, rang it again. Then I leaned on it for about two minutes. Mingo wasn’t home. I went back to my car. Mingo was probably off working at his soft job, driving the rich woman around Belmont. I turned on the radio and listened to the news at noon. Two things occurred to me. One was that nothing that ever got reported in the news seemed to have anything to do with me, and the other was that it was lunchtime. I drove about ten blocks to the Eastern Lamjun Bakery on Belmont Street and bought a package of fresh Syrian bread, a pound of feta cheese, and a pound of Calamata olives.
The bread was still warm. Then I went across the street to the package store and bought a six-pack of Beck’s beer, then I drove back and parked in front of Mingo’s house and had lunch, and listened to a small suburban station that played jazz and big-band music. At three I drove down the block to a gas station and filled my gas tank and used the men’s room and drove back up to Mingo’s and sat some more.
I remembered this kind of work as less boring fifteen years ago when I used to smoke. Probably not so. Probably just seemed that way. At four fifteen Mingo showed up. He was driving a tan Thunderbird with a vinyl roof. He pulled into the driveway beside the house and got out. I got out and walked across the street. We met at the front steps of his home.
I said, “Are you Mingo Mulready?”
He said, “Who wants to know?”
I said, “I say, ‘I do,’ then you say, ‘Who are you?’ then I say—”
He said, “What the fuck are you talking about, Jack?”
He was big enough to talk that way, and he must have been used to getting away with it. He was about my height, which made him just under six two, and he was probably twenty-five or thirty pounds heavier, which would have made him 230. He had one of the few honest-to-God boot-camp crew cuts I’d seen in the last eight or ten years. He also had small eyes and a button nose in a doughy face, so that he looked like a mean, palefaced gingerbread man. He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt and black gloves. He wore no coat.
I said, “Are you Mingo Mulready?”
“I want to know who’s asking,” he said. “And I want to know pretty quick, or I might stomp your ass.”