Killers by Howie Carr Page B

seem walking in here with no introduction or nothing. But I’m just an errand boy, you understand? I told them this was a fool’s errand, but they’re from the South, they’re businessmen, they’re squares.”
    â€œAnd you’re not?”
    â€œI’m broke is what I am.”
    â€œHow much they offering me?” I asked. “How much if I can stop it?”
    â€œI think they’d want some kind of guarantee.”
    A guarantee? I had to smile again.
    â€œThey want something in writing, do they?”
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    â€œNo, I don’t, Jack. I really don’t. Tell me.”
    Hobart glanced over at me, scowling. I don’t think he could believe I’d been talking to this bent cop for as long as I had.
    â€œYou got this money with you now?”
    â€œNo, of course not. They just wanted me to sound you out.”
    â€œOkay, Jack, you’ve done that. You go report back to your businessmen from the South that I’m thinking about it.”
    â€œWhat does that mean, exactly? ‘Thinking about it’?”
    â€œIt means I don’t usually talk to people who just walk in here like you did, but I made an exception in your case, and I want to do a little checking.”
    â€œOn me?”
    â€œOn everything.”
    â€œWhat can I tell my people?”
    â€œTell your people I’m doing a little checking.”
    â€œWhen do I see you again?”
    â€œWhen I have something to tell them. Or when you have some cash. Now screw.”

 
    6
    EX MARKS THE SPOT
    I screwed.
    A lot of people might have been taken aback to get that kind of brusque brush-off. But I didn’t take it personally. To take something personally, you really have to believe something’s on the level. I’ve been around too long to entertain such delusions. Bench was just playing his role—tough guy gangster. And I was playing mine—messenger boy. And I was already ahead of the game, having gotten paid up front.
    On my way back to the South End, I called Kevin Caulfield to fill him in. He didn’t seem disappointed either; at least he had something to tell Westridge. I don’t think he’d been expecting much anyway. He was another guy who wasn’t operating under any illusions that anything was on the level.
    I was glad for the business, but despite my alleged dodgy reputation, I don’t play in the same league as Bench and Sally. I’m just a State House hustler, and they’re wiseguys. Caulfield might have been able to come up with somebody a little more “in the element” as they say, but there’s a danger in dealing directly with wiseguys. They have a tendency to go rogue, especially if you give them cash. You could hand somebody $20,000 to deliver and then you’d never see them again, or if you did, they’d claim somebody ripped ’em off before they got to the Alibi and could you please give ’em another twenty large, no hard feelings? And no, they didn’t get a good look at the guys who robbed them. Everything with these guys is a scam, they’re even worse than politicians.
    Caulfield was using me because he and I played by the same rules—State House rules. I had to answer to him, just like the guy who frisked me had to answer to Bench. Caulfield told me to keep making calls, see what I could turn up, and they’d keep paying me. Sounded like a plan to me, especially the part about getting paid.
    Once I got home to Shawmut Avenue, I made a call to a House chairman who owed me. He’d paid me well for services rendered, but I’d gone above and beyond the call of duty. He’d been pinched in Boston for drunk driving, survivable in most years, but this particular cycle he’d just split up with his wife and he’d been running against a fresh-faced young selectman.
    The cop who’d pinched my guy was a real blister, and I soon discovered why he had such a