"I keep my trap shut about Dwayne," he said.
"And what do I do?"
"You walk," he said. "And I walk and nobody says nothing."
"And nobody shoots Dwayne?" I said.
"Nobody shoots him, nobody bribes him, nobody mentions his name again."
I leaned my head back against the padding on my chair. I was tired. Tired of Deegan, tired of Dwayne, tired of tough guys and cops and guns and deals. I was tired of almost everything but Susan.
"Whaddya think?" Deegan said.
I shook my head slowly, still against the back of my chair.
"No?" Deegan said. "Why no?"
"Davis," I said.
"Davis," Deegan said, "why do you give a fuck about Davis? You got nothing to do with Davis."
"Got to get something for Davis," I said.
Deegan took in a long breath and let it out and dipped his nose into the glass for a moment and swallowed.
"You got to get something for Davis," he said.
I nodded.
"How about getting dead for Davis?" Deegan said.
"Hard to do," I said.
Deegan nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "It is."
He drank again.
"But it's not impossible," he said.
"I can put you away on the gambling charge," I said. "Dwayne will testify. So will I. You're a known hoodlum. You'll be a long time gone."
The wind seemed to have shifted. I could hear the rain being driven at a slant against the window behind me.
"What do you want for Davis?" Deegan said.
"The rest of the OTB crew."
"OTB?"
"You and some other guys knocked over an Off Track Betting parlor in New York. I want the guys you did it with."
"I can't do that," Deegan said. "They'd fucking kill me."
"I'll get you a witness protection deal. You aren't prosecuted and the Feds will give you a new identity and relocate you."
"All to keep you from pushing this gambling thing?" he said.
"And I don't tell your wife about Madelaine," I said.
Deegan looked at me a long time without speaking.
"You are a hard fucking case," he said, "aren't you?"
The question was rhetorical. I didn't comment.
"For a fucking arrogant asshole kid, talks about himself in the third person," Deegan said.
"He's good at what he does," I said.
"So what the fuck is that to you?" Deegan said.
"Girlfriend's nice, too," I said.
"Chantel?"
"Yeah, she sees something in him."
"So what the fuck is that to you?" Deegan said.
"You want to deal, or not?" I said.
Deegan stood slowly, and put his whiskey glass on my desk and walked over to the wall to the right of my desk and stretched both hands above his head and leaned on the wall. He did a couple of push-aways on the wall and then turned and leaned his back against it.
"Who you dealing with in New York?" Deegan said.
I shook my head.
Deegan grinned. "Sure," he said. "Of course you won't say. You don't give a fucking inch on anything."
"You're not dead," I said.
Deegan raised his eyebrows. Then he walked to my desk and poured another shot for himself.
"You get it together in New York, names, promises, the works, in detail and then we'll talk again. Where do I reach you?" I said.
Deegan paused, thought about that for a moment, then shrugged.
"I'll be with Madelaine," he said.
"I'll be in touch," I said.
Deegan picked up the whiskey glass and tossed the rest of the scotch down. He put the glass on my desk again and turned and walked to my door. He tugged his collar up higher.
"Raining like a bastard," he said, and went out.
34
I spent the next day on the phone. I talked three or four times to Maguire in Brooklyn, and then twice to a guy from the New York Federal Attorney's office, a guy named Jennerette.
"Why don't you nail him for the gambling thing up there?" Jennerette said, "if it's so air tight."
"Because I'm trying to protect the player," I said.
"So why not let Deegan walk. He keeps quiet, you keep quiet?"
"Couple of reasons," I said.
I'd already gone through them with Maguire and with the commander of the Brooklyn robbery squad.
"He's walking around loose, with only the player to finger him, he might find it more sensible to ace the player. Also another kid died in this deal, kid named Danny Davis. I figure somebody has to pay dues for that."
"What's this kid Davis to you?" Jennerette said.
"Nothing," I said. "But somebody owes something for him; and I don't want the other kid to see Deegan walk away from this looking like a stand up guy."
"Witness protection isn't like doing time," Jennerette said.
"That's not it," I said. "I want my kid to see Deegan rat on his buddies."
There was silence on the phone.
"You want us to help you cover up a crime, so you can give some kid an object lesson?"
"You bet," I said.
Again silence on the phone.
"Why not try to get Deegan on the murder of this kid Davis?" Jennerette said.
"Expose my client," I said. "I'm trying to save this kid. He's got a future if I can save him."
"Mr. Fucking Rogers," Jennerette said.
"You get several guys that are better off the streets. Brooklyn cleans up a robbery that's been making them look bad. Witness Protection gets the chance to hang out with Bobby Deegan, always a treat. Who knows what you may find out once you get Deegan talking. Guy's a connected guy. You could end up on `Nightline.' "
"Boss will end up on `Nightline,' " Jennerette said. "Hold on a minute."
I could hear the phone being put down on the desk and the faint sounds of office noise: voices, other phones ringing, the tap, occasionally, of high-heeled shoes. There was maybe five minutes of this and then Jennerette came back on the phone.
"Okay," he said. "Deegan turns, and gives us the OTB job, we'll give him immunity and protection. If," Jennerette paused for the "if" to sink in, "he delivers quality."
"But of course," I said.
"We'll be the judge of what's quality," he said.
"The rest of the crew in the OTB robbery," I said. "Is that quality?"
"Yes," Jennerette said.
"I'll get back to you," I said. We hung up.
I went down to the alley back of my building and got my car and headed for Newton. It was nearly four in the afternoon and traffic was beginning to clog things. Boston was never meant for automobiles. The streets wound in the downtown section like cattle trails without any reasonable pattern and even in Back Bay, where the grid system had been applied when the old bay was filled in in the nineteenth century, the scale was too limited for automobiles in large number. In New York they drove faster, but for simple difficulty in getting from one part of town to another, Boston was, on a scale of ten, ten.
Storrow Drive would be standing still at this time. And so would the Mass. Pike. Shrewdly, I stayed off both and went straight out Commonwealth. So did everyone else. I hit every red light, and got to Newton at five thirty-five. Bobby and Madelaine were having cocktails. There was a pitcher of martinis on the coffee table. No one offered me one.
"Brooklyn will go for it," I told Deegan.
He was sitting in a Barcalounger wearing a white cotton sweater over a crimson polo shirt, collar up. His acid-washed jeans were carefully ironed and his Top-Siders were new.
"You turn on the OTB thing and they give you immunity and protection."
"And you?" he said. Madelaine sat on the foot of the Barcalounger, near his ankles, her left hand resting on his knee, sipping a martini from a thick lowball glass. She had her shoes off but otherwise looked as if she'd just come from work in a gray wrap-around dress.
"Me? You don't mention Dwayne, and he and I don't mention you," I said. "Nobody ever fixed a Taft game."
"What happens about Davis?"
"I got no control over that," I said. "But if there's no gambling case, I don't know how they'll make you for Davis."
"Danny Davis?" Madelaine said.
Deegan made a shushing motion with his hand.