Killers by Howie Carr

guys with permits, you dig?”
    You dig? Sometimes I couldn’t figure out if Peppa was putting me on with that seventies Superfly dialogue, or if he was serious. Maybe I should start calling him “Jim,” like the Mafia guys with Richard Roundtree in Shaft .
    â€œIf I was checking us out for a heist,” Peppa continued, “I’d be giving us a wide fuckin’ berth. Too many eyes, too many guns.”
    That’s what I had figured. I just wanted to make sure they weren’t getting lazy.
    They got up and after we shook hands, I noticed the guy standing in the front door of the Alibi, mid-forties. He looked a little like an undercover cop, except he wasn’t dressed as well.
    But I didn’t make this guy for a cop. Any cop I knew—that is, paid—would just walk over. And if this were an official inquiry, he wouldn’t hesitate, and he wouldn’t be by himself. He was scanning the room, so I knew he could only be looking for me. He made me but was smart enough to walk over to the bar and sit down. I called to my manager, Hobart, who was wearing an old-fashioned butcher’s apron. He walked over to my table and leaned in, close to my face.
    â€œSee that guy over there at the bar,” I said. “You recognize him?”
    Hobart slowly looked around, then turned back. “Never seen him before.”
    â€œHe looks familiar. But he ain’t Somerville. I’d remember him if he was local. Must be from Boston.”
    Hobart smiled. “Maybe he’s another one of those guys, read about you in the paper and now he wants to get rid of his wife and he figures you’ll do a hit on the arm for him.”
    It’s happened before, more than once. This guy, though, didn’t have that furtive, beaten, henpecked look. He also didn’t look like he had $10,000 cash in his coat pocket, which was what the last guy had who asked me to kill his wife. I told him, let me give you some free advice pal, you want a hit man, just go down to your nearest State Police barracks and turn yourself in, ’cause they’re the only ones you’re gonna find in a bar who are willing to take a contract from somebody they don’t know. I always tell the poor bastards the same thing: it’s cheaper to keep her.
    Hobart said, “You want me to tell him to screw?”
    â€œNah,” I said. “Let him make his play. Sometimes I think I don’t talk to enough people anymore.”
    â€œSometimes I think you talk to too many,” Hobart said. He was referring to Peppa. That was something he and Sally shared in common. Neither of them liked blacks. I’d tried to explain to Hobart that these days it was good to have a few blacks around. Somebody wants to cap me, maybe he’ll think twice, wondering if he wants to have to worry for the rest of his life if every black guy he sees coming at him on the street is one of Bench’s guys. You’ve got to look for every edge you can.
    To which Hobart always replies, “You can’t fix Negro.”
    I halfheartedly read the Herald for a while, but the guy just sat there at the bar, sneaking an occasional look over at me. I got tired of the Herald and had started in on the New York Post when the guy made his move. He took a last swig of his beer, then got up and began slowly walking toward me. Every eye in the place was on him. Hobart, at the next table, reached into his apron pocket, just in case. The guy didn’t look like trouble, at least not gun trouble, but you never know. He reached the table and stood in front of me.
    â€œHi, Bench,” he said. “You may not remember me—”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œMy name’s Jack Reilly, I used to be a cop in Boston, worked for the mayor—”
    Now I remembered him. He was a bagman. He used to come around to my place on Columbus Avenue, Dapper’s, before I burned it down. Then he started showing up at the garage. I