Killing Them Softly

“THE STUPID SHIT,” Frankie said. He sat in Amato’s office. “You know who he picks to call, of course. Me. Only he don’t remember I moved, so he calls Sandy, and he got her up and she’s all pissed and she calls me and give me a whole ration of shit and then I got to call him and I hadda girl with me. And of course I got to give my name to them, they won’t let anybody else talk to him.”

“That’s good,” Amato said.

“Yeah,” Frankie said. “Oh, I’m gonna really enjoy this, I can tell. Wants me to come down and see him. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘sure, Russell, and I won’t have a hundred ballbusters following me around for the rest of my life if I do that, either. No thanks. I didn’t have nothing to do with it and I told you what was gonna happen and you wouldn’t listen to me.’

“ ‘Did you tell them?’ he says to me,” Frankie said. “ ‘Are you the fuckin’ bastard that told them?’

“ ‘Russell,’ I said,” Frankie said, “ ‘nobody hadda tell them. You told them yourself. What am I gonna tell cops anything for? Tell me that, huh? You wanna blame somebody, blame yourself.’ That calmed him down some. Well, will I make bail for him? ‘Depends,’ I said. See, he hasn’t got no money left. Spent it on his problem, which I don’t think they’re probably gonna let him go out and sell, now. ‘What’s the bail?’ Just what you’d expect, his record and a pound of that stuff. One hundred thousand dollars.”

“Ten K from you,” Amato said.

“Well,” Frankie said, “there’s guys that’ll write one for five per cent if you wanna handle some things for them now and then, but onna guy like him I doubt you could get it even from one of them. But either way, it’s too much, and besides, I tell him, ‘Keep in mind, I just got out of the can myself. Where’d I get all that bread?’ No, I said I’d call somebody for him, but that’s all, he can make his own deal. ‘You ask me,’ I said, ‘I don’t even think that’s gonna do it for you, though. You raise the hundred, they’ll go to double surety or two hundred or something. Those guys aren’t gonna let you out. Forget it.’

“So that’s what he tells me,” Frankie said, “and then he says: ‘Frankie, if I don’t get out of here, I’m gonna tell them you were in it with me.’ ”

“Nice guy,” Amato said.

“Ah,” Frankie said, “he was all pissed off. I don’t blame him. And what the fuck’s he gonna tell them? I said: ‘Russell, get off the pot, all right? You bring me into this, I’ll tell them everything you told me about Goat-ass stealing that other stuff, and all the dogs and the insurance thing you had with Kenny onna car and everything. So don’t hand me that shit.’ He’ll be all right. It’s just, he’s looking at a lot of time. You can’t blame him. I asked a guy, he said his guess is, probably eight, ten, something like that. So naturally that means, they probably told him guys’ve been getting fifteen or so, maybe more.

“Them guys,” Frankie said, “I mean, they are bad. This kid I talked to, he said they come at you from just about every place at once. ‘They tell you,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to say nothing to them. But that sure don’t stop them from saying something to you. They toss you in New York,’ he said, ‘it’s gonna take them, always, three or four hours, before you can see a judge, and all the time they’re talking to you. I think them guys’ve got cassettes in them. “You’re a lost dude this time. You’re gonna go in and you’re never gonna come out again. You’re crazy, that’s all. We know you’re not in it alone. You better talk about it.” ’ So, he was probably pissing his pants when he called me. So I told him: ‘Russell, I tell you what: I’ll get you a lawyer. That’s all I can do for you.’ ”

“The fuck’s a lawyer gonna do for him?” Amato said.

“He’s gonna do it for me,” Frankie said. “He’s gonna get Russell off my back. He wanted Mike Zinna.”

“I doubt if you can get him Mike,” Amato said. “I doubt if Mike’ll touch him.”

“Oh, for Christ sake,” Frankie said. “Of course I can’t get him Mike. I can’t afford Mike, I couldn’t get Mike for myself. And Mike, Mike couldn’t do nothing for him. What’s he gonna do, the guy’s alone and he’s got it in his hands? Make it disappear? What Russell really needs is a magician. No, I got him Toby.”

“I dunno Toby,” Amato said.

“That’s because you never had nothing to do with junk,” Frankie said. “When they grab you with the junk, you call Toby and you pay him no more’n a grand and he gets you as good a deal as anybody could. The cops all know him. He’s cheap and all the good anybody can do for Russell, Toby’ll do it, and without going all ape-shit and telling the guy to give them the names of everybody he ever saw.

“Added to which,” Frankie said, “there’s certain things Toby won’t do, and that’s good for me. Because Russell’s gonna want something else, I figure.”

“Somebody hit the guy he thinks put him in,” Amato said.

“Right,” Frankie said. “So, all right, I’m a bastard, but there’s no way inna world he’s gonna be able, get Toby to tell me that, and I’m not personally gonna go down and see him.”

“Where is he?” Amato said.

“Charles Street,” Frankie said.

“You’ll get the message, then,” Amato said.

“I don’t object to hearing it,” Frankie said. “You hear it, you can always say, well, what the fuck, I wouldn’t go around and do something like that on what I heard. No, if the guy asked me, I’d have to tell him something, I guess, and I don’t wanna do that, you know? I like Russell. He was all right to me, and I told him, not to do this. But shit, Goat-ass just did what he wanted, he went out and stole four pounds of procaine or something like that, and I suppose some fuckin’ cop was bright enough, starts wondering who wants pounds of that stuff and that was it for Russell. Goat-ass didn’t do anything. And besides, who the fuck am I? I didn’t, I don’t know anybody.”

“I see where Trattman knows a couple guys or so, though,” Amato said.

“That poor bastard,” Frankie said.

“Well,” Amato said, “I mean, it wasn’t like, you didn’t expect it or something.”

“Sure,” Frankie said. “But, you know, when it didn’t happen, and Russell was telling me all that stuff there, then I was scared shitless, it wasn’t gonna happen. I thought it was gonna happen to me. That don’t mean, well, yeah, I’m glad it happened to him. But, I still wish it didn’t even happen to him, you know? Didn’t have to. Like Russell. I knew this was gonna happen to Russell. I told him. But the fuck, I know the guy. And I can’t do nothing to help him. I don’t know anybody.”

“He took his chances,” Amato said.

“Sure,” Frankie said, “and now he’s gonna take his time. And you’re taking your chances and I’m taking my chances and we’re gonna do this thing, sooner or later, and probably they’re not gonna get us this time, either. But I was thinking about it, right? Suppose, me and Dean go in the place, all of a sudden we got all kinds of cops around. Who do I call? Who do I call, that’s not gonna give me the same kind of shit I give Russell? You know why Russell called me? Because, who else’s he got to call? And it’s the same thing. If we get grabbed in there, Dean calls Sandy. And what do I do? Have him tell her, get me somebody too? I can’t call you, for Christ sake. They’d be waiting for that. I, we haven’t got no friends, either. You look at it, you and me and Russell’re in exactly the same position, except he’s in it now and we’re not in it yet.”

“Well, Jesus,” Amato said, “I mean, this was your idea and everything. It isn’t like, I came around and saw you on this one. Shit, you’re afraid of it, forget it. Won’t piss me off any. I just went down there and I did, I did what you wanted. I haven’t got no investment in this. I made almost four thousand yesterday alone. I can do without it.”

“Won for a change,” Frankie said.

“Yeah,” Amato said, “I kind of liked it too. Broke even about, the first part of the week. I got fifteen hundred or so Thursday after and then last night, another twenty-five onna Knicks. Knicks’re gonna take it, this time.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said. “John, you told me it was gonna snow in the winter, I’d go out and bet against it, you know that?”

“Nice when you win, though,” Amato said. “I figure, after what I been through, I’m gonna be winning pretty good when I start.”

“I figure,” Frankie said, “I’m never gonna start. I’m gonna stick to things I can figure out.”

“Well,” Amato said, “what is it, then?”

“How does it look?” Frankie said.

“It looks good to me,” Amato said. “It’s nice and dark, they backed the block up to where they put the fill and there’s a lot of brush and stuff there and signs on the roof that’ll cover you when you’re up on the roof. It’s brick in front, which don’t matter, and it’s cinderblock in back. The roof’s flat. Looks like tar and pebbles, some kind of cheap shit. I’d go in through the roof. There’s a grocery store on one side and a place that sells glasses on the other side and I suppose you could go in through there. But I wouldn’t. I’d go the roof. The guys in there in the daytimes’re those dopes from Northeast Protective that couldn’t see a hockey game in Boston Garden. The cops, I didn’t do the cops yet. Northeast always works on two, three hour schedules because they don’t hire enough guys. But if you don’t want to do it, it’s okay.”

“John,” Frankie said, “it’s not this job. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not this one and it’s not gonna be the next one, either, that’s giving me the yikes. It’s just, ah, shit, I dunno what it is. I don’t like having guys after me, you know? I don’t care who they’re working for, I don’t like having guys after me.”