Small Vices

chapter 23

The maroon Chevy wagon that had picked up Beer Keg and his crew was registered to Bruce Parisi at an address in Arlington, near the Winchester line. I called Rita Fiore.

“Can you find out if a guy named Bruce Parisi, currently living on Hutchinson Road in Arlington, has a record.”

“Sure.”

“And, if he does, and I’ll bet he does, get me whatever you can on him.”

“Sure, I’ll call you back.”

“No, I’m in the car,” I said. “It’s easier if I call you.”

“Well, a car phone?”

“Modern crime fighter,” I said.

It was a bright, windy day at the rim of the Mystic lakes. I turned left off Mystic Street and onto Hutchinson Avenue and drove across the slope of a pretty good-sized hill and parked a little downhill from the house and across the street. It was a white colonial with green shutters and a screened porch on the side. It sat further uphill from the road. A long hot top driveway ran up past the screen porch and widened into a turn-around in front of a two-car garage set back of the house. The Chevy wagon was in the turn-around.

I sat with the motor idling and scanned the dial for music. My favorite, Music America, had been taken off the local public radio station by the airheads who ran it. I listened occasionally to one or another of the college stations, but they tended to play fusion, and the DJs were usually painful. I hit the scan button and watched it go around the dial without finding anything I wanted to hear. While I sat with the scanner scanning, the front door opened and a man came down the front steps looking like he was going to a reception at the British Consulate in a blue Chesterfield overcoat and a gray homburg hat. He got in the Chevy wagon, backed down the long driveway, and headed out past me toward Mystic Street. I let him turn the corner and U-turned and drifted along behind him. I could afford to lay back and let him get ahead of me. If I lost him, I knew where he lived. When you have that luxury, tailing is a breeze. We went along Mystic Street, turned onto Medford Street, and went through West Medford into Medford Square. He went down an alley between two buildings. I pulled up across from the alley entrance next to a “No Standing” sign and waited. In a minute or two he came out of the alley and went into a store front. The sign in the front window said “Parisi Enterprises.” I picked up my car phone and called Rita Fiore.

“I’m sitting outside Bruce Parisi’s office in Medford Square,” I said. “What do you have on him.”

“Been arrested three times,” Rita said. “Loan sharking twice, once for strong arm stuff: he contracted some goons to help break a strike.”

“Where’s Eugene Debs when you need him,” I said.

“There’s something might be interesting, though. Last time he was busted, two years ago for loan sharking, the arresting officer was a State Detective named Miller.”

“Tommy Miller?”

“Yes,” Rita said. “Wasn’t he the man who arrested Ellis Alves?”

“Yes,” I said. “He was.”

“Is it interesting?”

“Yes, it is.”

“You want to tell me what you’re doing?”

“If I knew, I would. But I don’t, so please don’t embarrass me by asking.”

“Fine,” Rita said. “Have a nice day.”

We hung up. My car wouldn’t last ten minutes where I was. I swung it across the street and down the alley behind Parisi Enterprises. There were three parking spaces back there. A sign on the back of the building said “Reserved for Parisi Enterprises. All Others Will Be Towed.” There was a car in each space. I parked directly behind the maroon Chevy. I didn’t want Parisi leaving before I did anyway. I took my .38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I’d seen Clint Eastwood do it once in the movies. Then I put the gun back on my hip, got out of the car, and strolled up the alley to the front of the building.

Parisi Enterprises didn’t have a lot of overhead. The office was furnished with two gray metal desks, a gray metal table, and two swivel chairs. There was an empty pizza box on the table, and several days’ worth of the Boston Herald scattered on one of the desks. The other desk held a big television set on which a talk show host was examining the issue of cross dressing with a bunch of guys in drag. Parisi had folded his coat on the empty swivel chair and put his gray homburg on top of it. He was seated behind the newspaper-littered desk talking on the phone. His hair was black and combed back in a big Ricky Ricardo pompadour that gleamed with hair spray. That he had been able to wear a hat without messing his do was a tribute to the holding power of whatever he sprayed on it. He didn’t look too tall, but he was fat enough to make up for it. Under his several chins he wore a white spread collar attached to a blue striped shirt. His tie was blue silk, and his blue double breasted suit must have cost him better than a grand because it almost fit him. He crooked the phone in his shoulder when I came in.

“Wait a minute,” he said into the phone, “a guy came in.”

He spoke to me.

“Whaddya want?” he said.

“You Bruce Parisi?” I said.

“You a cop?” he said.

“No.”

“Then take a hike,” he said. “I’m on the phone.”

“Hang it up,” I said.

“Fuck you, pal.”

I walked over to the wall and yanked the phone wire from the phone jack. Parisi looked as if he couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

“What are you, fucking crazy, you walk in here to my office and fuck with me?”

He let the phone fall from his shoulder as he stood and his hand reached toward his hip. I hit him with all the left hook I had handy and knocked him backwards over the swivel chair and into the wall behind it. The swivel chair skittered on its casters like something alive, the seat spinning and crashing into the desk as Parisi slid down the wall and landed on the floor, with one foot bent under him and the other tangled in the chair. I got a hold of his big pompadour and dragged him to his feet and slammed him face first against the wall. On his hip was a Berretta .380 in a black leather holster, the skimpy kind of holster that allows the gun barrel to stick through. I took the Berretta out of the holster and dropped it in the pocket of my coat and stepped away from him. He didn’t move. He stood with his face pressed against the wall, his hands at his sides.

“Gimme a day, two at the most, I’m working on a thing. I’ll have the money by tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m not here about money,” I said.

“What do you want?” he said into the wall.

“I want to know why four stiffs came to my office and threatened me if I didn’t drop the Ellis Alves case.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Why should I know.”

I stepped in close to him and dug a left into his kidneys. He gasped and sagged a little against the wall.

“You sent them,” I said.

“I don’t even know who you are,” he said.

“My name’s Spenser. You know a guy named Tommy Miller?”

“Yeah.”

“You sending the sluggers to my office got anything to do with him?”

“I don’t know what you’re...”

I hit him again in the same kidney. He made a kind of a yelp and his knees sagged. He turned toward me and slid his back down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, his fat legs splayed out in front of him. There was blood on the corner of his mouth. It took him a couple of tries to speak.

“Yeah. Tommy said he wanted you roughed up. I owed him a favor. I sent out some guys.”

“Why’d you owe him a favor?”

“He, ah, he helped me out when I got nabbed.”

“How?”

“Got rid of some stuff.”

“Evidence?”

“Yeah.”

“What are friends for,” I said.

“No harm done,” Parisi mumbled. “Nobody roughed you up. We was only going to scare you.”

“If you scare me again,” I said, “I will come back and kick your teeth out.”

“No trouble,” Parisi said. “No trouble.”

“Sure,” I said and walked out.