Killer

chapter 4

present

I took the commuter rail to South Station, and from there was going to have to catch a bus to Waltham. Nobody paid attention to me during the train ride, everyone locked into their own worlds. At least I could be thankful for that.

Once I got off at South Station I had an hour and a half to kill before my bus would be leaving, and I ended up walking down South Street to Beach Street, then on to Chinatown, figuring nobody would notice me there. First thing I did was buy some aspirin at a convenience store, hoping it would help with my headache. Next I found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where for three dollars and fifty cents I had a plate of fried rice with pork and a pot of hot tea. Simply having ice in my water glass was a luxury that I’d forgotten about. I ate hunched over with my head bowed. There were only a handful of other people in the place. Anyone whose gaze wandered over to me would have only seen me as an old man wearing poorly fitting baggy clothes sitting alone at a cheap Chinatown restaurant.

When I was done eating, I took my fork with me to the men’s room, stood in its lone stall and made several additional holes in my belt so I could use it to hold my pants up better. After that I paid my bill, left the restaurant, and made my way through Chinatown to Washington Street. I was surprised at how cleaned up the area had gotten with the X-rated theatres and most of the porn shops gone. There were still a couple of strip clubs, but they looked high end, and I watched as a small group of businessmen in suits walked into one of them. I continued on until I came to a jewelry store that advertised Guaranteed Highest Prices Paid in their window. The only person inside was a slug of a man who looked almost melted to the stool he sat perched on. He was in his fifties, not much hair, and had more bulges and chins than I’d seen on anyone in years. As I approached him he looked at me with mild disinterest. I handed him my Rolex watch and wedding ring, and he made a show of examining the Rolex with a jeweler’s glass, then consulted a catalog even though he probably had the prices memorized.

“This genuine?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was given to me as a gift in 1980.”

His earlier look of disinterest came back. “These Oyster quartz models, not a big demand. I might be able to give you three hundred…” He stopped as he caught the inscription on the back, Deepest gratitude, Salvatore Lombard. His eyes shot up at me and, as recognition hit him, the little color he had bled out, leaving his skin a sickly gray. “Eight hundred dollars,” he coughed out, his voice breaking into a hoarse whisper with his mouth not quite working right, almost as if he had palsy. I asked him how much for my wedding ring. He weighed the ring on a scale and told me he could give me two hundred dollars for it.

More as a joke than anything else I asked if he could guarantee that that would be the highest price paid, and he seized up for a moment, making me think he was about to have a heart attack, before nodding fervently. I told him in that case to pay me the thousand bucks.

While he counted out the money for me, his stare remained frozen at his hands as if he were afraid of accidentally looking up and catching sight of me.

“You’re the guy,” he said.

I ignored him. So far he had counted out four hundred dollars in fifty-dollar bills, painstakingly making sure none of the bills were stuck together. When he reached seven hundred dollars he asked again about me being the guy, the one they’ve been talking about in the news who used to be a hit man.

“Just pay me what you owe me.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, his tone hurt. “No reason to take that attitude.” He hesitated for a few seconds, added, “But I know you’re the guy.”

“What the fuck difference does it make to you?”

He seemed stuck trying to come up with an answer to that. Once he had the stack of fifties laid out on the countertop in front of me, I picked it up, counted it myself and fattened up my wallet with it. A thousand bucks wasn’t going to last long, but then again, I didn’t expect to last long myself either. I was halfway out the shop when the jeweler finally thought of something to say and asked me how it felt. I gave him a puzzled look and he added, “You know what I’m asking. After killing all those people, and then cutting a deal by ratting Salvatore Lombard. So how does it feel? You have any remorse?”

Several of his chins had jutted out in a kind of forced bravado, but I could see the tentativeness in his liquid eyes. I wasn’t even sure which he was asking me; whether I had remorse over being a rat or my murders. In any case, I didn’t bother answering him. I walked out the store and let the wind slam the glass door shut.

By the time I returned back to South Station, a small line of tired-looking people were waiting to board the bus to Waltham. I got behind them, fitting right in. As far as I could tell nobody bothered to look at me, at least no more than casual, bored glances. If anybody recognized me, I couldn’t tell. I took a seat in the last row. A discarded newspaper had been left on the floor. I picked it up and found a story about me starting on page five. It was a long article covering two pages. Fortunately it didn’t include a picture of me, just one of the DA who had made the deal with me, and on the following page of the article, another picture showing several family members of one of the guys I had taken out.

Up until then I’d been avoiding as best I could all the stories about me, but I read this article carefully. My eyes had trouble focusing on the small print and the effort made my headache worse, but I did learn a few things. The DA had long since moved on to private practice, and he told the paper how making the deal he did with me still haunted him but that he had no way of knowing at that time about my involvement with Lombard. I had had no arrest record – not even as a juvenile – and was off the grid as far as the mob was concerned, and that up until my arrest for the business at the docks he had never heard of me, nor had anyone else in law enforcement. All that was probably true. It always amazed me with the shit I pulled as a kid that I was never arrested, and not only that, never even had any cops harassing me. Once I started working for Lombard, I was kept on the fringes, at least at first. Later when I started doing contracts for him we were careful to keep our association together quiet. For twenty-three years I was on the books at Jack’s Discount Liquor Store on Lansing Street, and sometimes I actually spent my free hours uncrating boxes and stocking merchandise, although more often than not when I was there I would sit in the back room drinking scotch and studying the day’s racing forms. Still, as invisible as I might have kept myself, it was carelessness on their part. The violence I committed at the docks should’ve alerted them to what I was, and then there was the inscription on the back of my Rolex. There was no excuse on their part for missing that, just as there was none on mine for wearing that Rolex out in public. Christ, I had gotten sloppy by then.

Of course, you can’t always believe what you read in the papers. When I was first arrested, the papers and TV stations got half the shit wrong about what went down at the docks. Given that, I wasn’t sure what to make of a claim the article made that the state had kept the details of my confession secret until six months ago. Maybe it was true. Quotes given in the article from several of the victims’ families supported that. The other inmates at Cedar Junction, as well as the guards, knew what I’d done, but maybe that was just the word getting out from Lombard’s organization. Maybe that knowledge was kept inside.

The explanation the state gave in that article for keeping the details of my confession secret was an outright lie – that it was part of the deal I made, and that it was only following a recent Superior Court decision that they were allowed to divulge my sealed confession. It was all bullshit. If my confession was sealed, that was done by them, not me. I guess they’d been hoping I’d never leave prison alive, and once they realized that I was going to they came up with this fairy tale to cover their asses. Thinking about it, I was amazed that these state officials were willing to keep the victims’ families in the dark the way they did for so many years, but I guess it showed how afraid they were of the political fallout of having the public find out they cut a deal with a hit man with twenty-eight scalps tied to his belt.

The paper had talked to families of four of the guys I had taken out, and each of them were made to look like saints. I remembered these guys, and they were all dirty. I’m not saying they deserved to be killed, but they were far from the innocent choirboys they were made out to be. As I said before, you have to take what you read in the papers with a grain of salt. They get so much of the shit wrong.

By the time I finished with the article, my head was feeling like it was going to split apart. That wasn’t that unusual for me. The last fourteen years I’d had headaches almost constantly, and had learned for the most part to ignore them. Sometimes they were worse than other times, and this time it was worse. Much worse. I fished out of my pocket the bottle of aspirin I’d bought earlier and chewed on a few tablets. When I looked up, a teenage boy sitting three rows up was twisted in his seat and staring fixated at me. His eyes slits, his face a hard plastic mask. There was no question that he recognized me. I stared back, and realized that it didn’t make any fucking difference. I did what I did. People were going to know who I was, and sooner or later they were going to know where I was living. There was nothing I could do to change the past, and it was pointless thinking I could hide from it.

We kept up this staring contest, me and this boy, until a middle-aged woman who must’ve been this boy’s mother realized that he was staring at me. She smiled apologetically at me, while at the same time reprimanding him. He shrugged her off and said something to her that I couldn’t hear, but I knew from the panic in her face what it must’ve been. She grabbed him and forcibly moved him so that he was no longer looking at me. After that I stared out the window and watched while other cars rolled past us on the Mass Pike. If people inside the bus were staring at me, so be it. I had more important things to worry about. And more mundane things also.

Some of these more mundane things were necessities, like clothing. When Jenny was alive, I knew she was holding on to my old clothes for me, but once she died my kids probably threw it all out. Not that I knew for sure since Michael and Allison wouldn’t take my calls and I had no idea how to reach Paul, but that’s most likely what happened. So all the clothes I had were what I was wearing. In retrospect, I should’ve packed up my prison jeans and tee shirts and underwear, but the thought of smelling that prison detergent a second longer seemed unbearable. Even more so, the prison stench I had grown to imagine soaked into that clothing. As it was I was going to have to spend a good deal of time scrubbing myself before I’d be able to get that stench off my skin. Of course, I had far more than the mundane to worry about, but at least for a little while that’s what mercifully occupied my thoughts.

It didn’t seem to take long before the bus came to a stop at a congested street corner and the driver announced that we were at the Moody Street stop. I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled off the bus, more tired than I would’ve thought. Bone weary could’ve described how I was feeling. While my work details kept me on my feet all day, I wasn’t used to walking as much as I had today. I stood for a moment blinking as I looked around me. My first impression was that the area was a mix of yuppie and blue collar, with ethnic grocery stores and low-rent shops side by side with trendy-looking restaurants. I might’ve driven through Waltham once, I couldn’t remember. I never had much to do with this area. Even though it was maybe ten miles west of Boston, this city could’ve been on the opposite side of the world as far as Revere and my old life were concerned.

I stood on the street corner thumbing through the papers Theo had given me, the cold from the wind numbing my face. When I found the apartment rental form, I squinted at it until my eyes adjusted enough for me to be able to read the address on it. Then I set off on foot.

The apartment Theo arranged for me was in the basement of a five-story brick tenement building which looked like it had been built in the sixties. When I first showed up there, the woman working in the office gave me an empty stare as if I were any other low-income elderly renter, and it was clear to me that she had no idea who I was. She was in her forties, heavy, with badly thinning red hair, and this dull look about her like she was someone who had little interest in anything, at least not enough to bother paying attention to what was in the news and in the papers. If she was the person Theo had dealt with, it explained why my application was accepted. Or maybe even if she knew that I was a confessed hit man, it still wouldn’t have mattered to her.

Theo had set it up for the state to pay my security deposit and first month’s rent as part of the DOC’s prisoner reintegration program. After that I’d be responsible for all future payments, although I’d be getting additional state assistance checks for my first six months.

After I signed the required paperwork, the woman gave me a key and warned me that in a week I’d have to make my apartment available to their pest maintenance person; which meant clearing the countertops and storing any plates, glasses and silverware in boxes so the kitchen could be sprayed. I didn’t bother telling her that that wasn’t going to be a problem.

The apartment was a one-room studio with the kitchen and the living area all in the same space. It was supposed to be furnished, but there wasn’t much in it. A small cot, about the same as what I’d slept on in prison, and a badly chipped dresser from the seventies whose three drawers all stuck. The kitchen area had a sink and enough counter space to maybe hold a few canisters and a toaster. Three cheaply built and falling apart cabinets were placed above a stove that was from the same era as the dresser, and an even older refrigerator sat wedged in the corner. The floor around the stove felt greasy, and the small amount of countertop also had a thin layer of grease and other dirt covering it. When I moved closer, I noticed the small pellets scattered about. Mouse droppings. A quick look showed the bathroom was in worse shape, and even dirtier. Not much more than a tiny cubbyhole that barely fit the toilet, sink and shower stall crammed into it.

The place had a dank, unhealthy smell to it. Given the old-style industrial tiles used in the flooring, it was clear that the basement had never been intended for habitation and must have been meant for storage and converted later to apartments. I knew from experience that the tiles were made with asbestos, and I noticed a few of them were crumbling which made them health hazards. It would probably cost a small fortune to dig them all out so they had chosen to ignore it. Later when I had time I’d buy some cheap carpeting to cover them and hope that that would save me from lung cancer. Yeah, I know, wishful thinking.

I stood still for a moment, taking in what five hundred and sixty dollars a month bought these days. A dirty, musty, pest-infested space of maybe four hundred square feet, which made it both spacious and luxurious compared to where I was coming from. I’d make do. First thing I’d have to do was clean the place and get a few items – a lamp, a radio, and a card table and folding chair so I’d have someplace to eat. That would have to be later, though. It was three o’clock and I had to report at eight for work, and the bone weariness I’d been feeling earlier was now more as if my bone marrow had been replaced with lead. Christ, I couldn’t remember being this worn out. I moved over to the cot. The mattress had a brownish-yellowish stain running over it. I flipped it over and the other side wasn’t much better. Fuck it. I took off my jacket and lay on my back on the mattress. The damn thing smelled heavily of perspiration and body odor, maybe even worse than what I’d had in prison, but I was out within seconds.