Boston Cream

CHAPTER 7

Sean Daggett had four properties in the Boston area, not counting the one down the Cape.

There was the garage in Somerville, the one his father had owned, and his father before that, passed down the dark generations for certain kinds of business. There were cars in there and parts of cars, but none of them ever got worked on. People did sometimes; some bled or got bruised. Others passed through. Goods moved in and out. Hangers-on hung. Flesh got pressed. That kind of place. Then there was his newest acquisition, a defunct funeral home in Mattapan that was proving to be sweetly lucrative.

His family lived out of the city, of course, to keep the kids away from its fucking schools. Michael and Virginia went to St. Bridget’s in Framingham for a good parochial education free of Boston’s loony ideas and racial engineering. He and Bev had built a sprawling ranch house between Farm Pond and the Bracket Reservoir. The kids had one wing east of the grand centre hall, with their own bathroom and entertainment room and study. The west wing held the master bedroom and monster bath where you could soak, shower, massage and otherwise pamper yourself. They had their own big-screen den too, him and Bev. He slept at home almost every night.

The fourth place, the three-bedroom condo on the top floor of Williams Wharf, was his sanctuary, the place he came to do his white-collar work, where no one got bloodied. Here he received guests of a certain stature, representing the many snaking arms of Boston’s public services. Here he could think and plan in quiet, or as quiet as his head ever got.

The views of the harbour were breathtaking in almost every room. Ask anyone who had been there. His office, kitchen and bedroom all faced east. And out on the balcony, where he stood now, it was fucking panoramic. He had his leather jacket on and an Irish whiskey rocks in his hand, easing the spring night chill. Facing north, hip against the balcony wall, he could see the Bunker Hill Monument, the soaring stone rose-coloured in the footlights. He had grown up a few blocks from there on Russell Street, but hadn’t lived there in years. After his dad died, his mother had sold the place to a yuppie couple with one kid, early gentrifiers, and she hosed them but good on the price. Got three times what she would have got a couple of years before. Charlestown, once a tough old neighbourhood. There were more dry cleaners than bars now-what did that tell you about a place? The old crowd in Charlestown never needed dry cleaners. They had wives for that.

One of his bedrooms at Williams Wharf had been set up as a workout room, which he used often. Sean was past thirty-five but not yet forty, and kept himself hard and quick. Five-ten and 175: all he’d ever needed with his anger, his speed.

The third bedroom was a guest room made up if he ever needed to sleep downtown. But not with other women. Sean had been faithful to Bev since the day he fell for her at fifteen, felt lucky that she returned his love the way she did, loved the kids they were bringing up. They had survived their one bad crisis with Michael, had come through it strong, and he still found her so beautiful he would never even think of cheating, couldn’t imagine tasting another woman’s mouth or body. The Italians he did business with-the local concern being the remnants of the Patriarca family-Jesus, they ran around like crabs on a beach. Cunt hounds every one of them, sleazing from one lay or blow job to the next, all while the wives cooked and banged out kids and combed their hair on Sundays and took them to church.

Not Sean. He didn’t need all that drama. This place was a man’s place, one big den, in the very north end of Boston, smack among the Italians; how do you like that for balls?

Sean’s father had been a Charlestown classic, Michael James Daggett, a.k.a. Mad Mickey or the Mad Mick. One of Whitey’s boys: Whitey Bulger, who ran the Boston Irish Mob for close to thirty years while his brother Billy ran the State House just as long. All through his climb and his long time at the top, Whitey instilled in his men the one, the only, absolute rule of the trade: Never rat. Never tell a cop a thing. Never look a fed in the eye, other than to spit in it. Never say a word. Do your time like a man, we’ll look after the missus. Above all, never rat.

All while singing like a diva to the FBI. For years.

An epic Wagnerian song cycle, performed by Whitey and his partner Steve Flemmi. They informed on rivals and friends alike to keep their own trade humming, killing prodigiously all the while. Stevie especially. Even killing killers who killed for them. Killing girls. The details on some of the girls, when that all came out, were sickening, even to Sean. But even as the warrants were being issued, Whitey’s pals in the FBI warned him off and he stayed free another fifteen years.

Mad Mickey had been dumb enough or strong enough to believe in the Charlestown code and went to prison rather than deal with the feds. The feds got pissed enough to send him to Milan, Michigan, a rathole if ever there was one, a snake pit like Bedlam, only Bedlam wasn’t eighty per cent black. Mickey kept his mouth shut from the time he was swept up, never said a word in any interrogation room, courtroom or pretrial cell. Kept his idea of honour and did his time like an all-star, wouldn’t back down from a Panzer division, until he got into a fight where he brought fists and the brother had a knife, stabbed him deep through his ribs into the lungs, and the life whistled out of the slick bubbling hole in minutes. His father had stuck to the Town code and it got rubbed in his face like road rash. So excuse Sean if he didn’t feel sentimental about Charlestown. He got a kick out of seeing it from his balcony and never having to live there again. Once a square mile of mayhem and thievery and now a pocket of real estate deals.

Whitey’s treachery, his hypocrisy, his shattering of so many hearts had decimated the Irish Mob. It had never quite recovered. When Sean came out of prison last year, a lot of people thought he might make a move-he had the genes and savage temper for it-but he had stayed quiet. Not because he lacked anything for balls. His were big as Mickey’s and no less brass. It was because he was going to bust in the back door when he was good and ready.

Sean had a secret. One that meant he could stay clear of his old ways, anything that could take him back to Cedar Junction. His four-year bit there had cured him of any desire to get strip-searched and hosed down again. To miss his family and the other things that mattered. Now clear of probation, he was building something so new, so far under anyone’s radar, that not one of the many agencies that had pursued him over the years had a clue he was back in business. All because of Michael. A gift brought to his doorstep by his own beloved boy. His opening was coming. Out of the ashes of Whitey’s great deception, he was rebuilding. Gathering steam fast, with loads of cash coming in, untraceable. Soon he’d have enough to make his mark on the town. To carry a big enough stick that he could speak softly as a prayer.