The New Black Mask (No 4)

George V. Higgins The Sins of the Fathers

George V. Higgins is recognized as having the best ear for speech of any writer now practicing his craft in America. Praise for his dialogue implies that he is simply an accurate transcriber; but Mr. Higgins’s use of dialogue utilizes a sophisticated narrative technique in which authorial exposition is eliminated and the omniscient writer is replaced by the omniscient reader. George V. Higgins’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle has been selected as one of the twenty novels in the British Book Marketing Council’s Authors USA promotion. His thirteenth novel, Imposters, will be published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in the spring.

“I am telling you right now,” Norbert Johnson said, “that you would not believe, that no sane person would believe, what I go through with this guy.” He wore a gray T-shirt that said “Property New England Patriots” on the front, encircling a Patriots logo of a colonial soldier preparing to throw a football. He sat behind the old wooden desk in the range master’s office at the Watertown Sportsman’s Club in the basement of the old Franklin Pierce School. The first floor had been converted to a YMCA, and there was a basketball game in progress over Norbert’s head. The vibration made the big green pipes in the basement shake on their hanging rods, dislodging droplets of condensed moisture onto Norbert’s desk. To his right, behind the steel safety door with the pane of safety glass at eye level in the center, the Wellesley Annie Oakleys enjoyed their weekly hour shooting at cardboard targets, the dull, thin concussions of their S&W .38s, 9 mm.’s, and Beretta .25s coughing through the padded paneling.

“You’re gonna,” Shanahan said, nodding toward the top of the desk where Norbert had a chromed Colt .45 automatic apart, “you’re gonna get that thing all screwed up, you get it wet like this.”

Johnson looked down irritably at the gun. “Oh, I could give a shit,” he said. “You know whose gun this is? This is Lieutenant Foster’s personal sidearm, that’s whose gun it is. And you know the last time Lieutenant Foster personally cleaned his personal sidearm? Lemme give you a clue, all right? Eisenhower was president.”

“Oh, come on,” Shanahan said. “Foster’s only about forty. Can’t be that long ago.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Johnson said. “You’n’ me’re thirty-five. You’re forgetting: time goes by. Don’t matter who you are. Charlie Foster’s fifty-five. Fifty-four at least.”

“He can’t be,” Shanahan said. “He’s in beautiful shape if he is, and besides, even if he is, that’d only make him, what, about...”

“About twenny years old when Ike was president,” Johnson said. “Which happens to be what he was. And sure, he’s in beautiful shape. Wouldn’t you be in beautiful shape, you never did a fuckin’ thing? Course you would, you jerk. Guy doesn’t even clean his own goddamned gun, for Christ sake. Naturally he’s got the skin of Elizabeth Taylor anna look of a man half his age. Heaviest thing the guy’s lifted since he turned eighteen’s a sandwich. A sandwich he paid for, of course — Lieutenant Foster takes no graft. He’s got integrity. Plus balls the size of an elephant’s, but that’s another thing.”

“Well,” Shanahan said, nodding toward the dismantled .45, “then I assume he’s paying you, I mean. For cleaning his gun for him.”

“Oh,” Norbert said, “sure he is. He’s paying me ten bucks. Which when I get it, I will treat you to a beer. Which I hope you’re not very thirsty for, right about now, because I have done this job before, for Lieutenant Foster. I have done it lots of times, for the same ten bucks. And you know how many ten bucks I have seen for doing it? ‘None’ would be a real good guess. You couldn’t miss with that.”

“He doesn’t pay you?” Shanahan said. “I wouldn’t take that from the old son of a bitch. I’d tell him he can take his gun and stick it up his ass.”

“I think you would,” Johnson said. “I really think you would.”

“Well, I would,” Shanahan said. “I’ve done it before.”

“And you can do that,” Johnson said, “because you don’t mind, he tells you: ‘Aw right, Shanahan, you prick, go patrol the lumberyard all night, and see how you like that.’ That’s why you can do that.”

“Well,” Shanahan said, “that’s all right, if he does that. I don’t give a shit. I’d rather count the fuckin’ boards’n kiss Foster’s big fat ass.” He snickered. “I got at least one ball, Norbert. That’s more’n you can say.”

“No, it’s not,” Norbert said. “I got both my balls. The problem I have got is this: my father’s got both his.”

“Your father’s retired,” Shanahan said. “There’s no way Foster can get at your father. Your father is retired. He don’t, Foster can’t, put your father inna lumberyard. What’s this shit you’re giving me, your father, all that crap.”

“My father,” Johnson said, “my fucking goddamned father. I’m telling you, it’s like I said. You just would not believe it. You know how him and my mother, they don’t get along?”

“What difference does it make, Norbert?” Shanahan said. “Them two’re, they’re at least divorced, we started onna force. And that was sixteen years ago, I first meet your old man. He wasn’t living with her then. He was off by himself.”

“Right,” Johnson said. “He had the pad down Inman, down in Inman Square, took the trolley car to work. And Foster was the sergeant then. Fuckin’ prodigy. And Foster knows Gerard don’t live in the city, like the rules require. And Foster is all over him, got the needle out. So you know who cleaned Foster’s gun, until Gerard retires? Gerard cleans Foster’s gun, is who. Gerard cleans Foster’s gun. Gerard picks up his laundry for him. Gerard shines his brass. Gerard’s his personal servant, right? Gerard’s his fuckin’ slave. Because if Gerard’s not his slave, Gerard is out of work.” He paused. “Besides, Leo Sullivan was chief, and you know how Leo was. Knight of Malta, all that shit, Communion every day. One of his cops left his wife, he’d better be a Protestant, or kiss his ass goodbye. You think Foster reams you out, with the lumberyard? It’s nothing, boy, compared to Leo. Leo was a holy terror. You could ask anyone.

“Now,” Johnson said, “Gerard retires. Comes under the heart bill. Hits the old blood pressure jackpot onna fuckin’ annual physical. ‘Clean your locker out, Gerard. Hate to do this to you, chum. You know how it is. Got to have our finest fit. No invalids in here.’ I thought he was gonna have a goddamned attack from laughing, he got home and calls me up after he gets the news. ‘I did it, Norbert,’ he keeps saying, ‘I outlasted them. I took their crap for all those years, and now I’m getting out. Forty-eight years old, full pay, I got the shooting range for days and nights all to myself. I tell you, kid, stick by that job. That job will stick by you.’

“The very next day,” Johnson said, “the very next fucking goddamned day, I go in as usual, the afternoon, and I’m down my locker getting my stuff on, and who’s this standing next to me but Sergeant Macintosh. Good old Sergeant Macintosh. Mack wouldn’t kiss a goat’s ass unless the goat had seniority. Then he would lick the thing and tell the goat it tasted good, and could he have some more. ‘Lieutenant Foster wants to see you, his office,’ Mack tells me. And then he goes limping off like he’s got a load in his pants, and I finished getting dressed and report. And Foster looks me up and down and says: ‘Well, Patrolman Johnson, hear your old man got the pink slip. Hear old Gerard’s left the force.’ And I say, I hem and haw ’cause I know they hate each other, I say: ‘Yessir, he has.’ And he gives me this nasty-looking grin, and he says. ‘Well, Norbert, then I guess that just leaves you.’

“Now,” Johnson said, “I’m stupid, all right? I admit it. I don’t know a lot. All those years that my father’s been kissing Foster’s ass and trying, stay out of his way, doing his errands and all of that shit, I thought it was personal. But it wasn’t personal, see? Maybe was in the beginning, Foster’s looking around for some way he can ride my old man, and he thinks: ‘Hey, I’ll make the bastard do my fuckin’ errands for me.’ But then, after all those years, the reason for it, you know, didn’t matter any more. Now it was just a matter, Foster gettin’ his fuckin’ errands done for him. He was used to it. So, he hears Gerard is gettin’ through, and he thinks: ‘Holy shit. I’m gonna have to pick up my own stuff, the cleaners. I’m gonna have to, when my car needs the inspection sticker, I’m gonna have to take it down the garage myself. What the hell do I do now?’ And then he thinks: ‘I know what I’ll do now. I’ll think up some way, get Gerard’s kid to do my shit.’ And that is what he did.”

“I don’t understand,” Shanahan said. “Your father, okay, he didn’t live in the city. But you, shit, you live there. You live right down on Congreve Street. What’s he got on you?”

“Well,” Johnson said, “it’s very simple, once you think about it. See, my old man, when Gerard and my mother split up there, it’s not because my old man, he’s lost interest in gettin’ his ashes hauled, all right? He always was a fuckin’ rooster, so he says at least, struttin’ around and braggin’ all the time he’s maybe not very big but his dick is always hard. He used to have this habit where he’d whip it out, you know? He’d bet you, he’d say all these wild things, and I guess he must’ve been able to get it up whenever he wanted. I guess he must’ve been able to do that, because whenever he’d bet, down the bar or something with the boys, he always won. So, him and my mother split up, which finally gives her a vacation, I guess, and he starts... What he does is start going the massage parlors, all right? That is what he does.

“Now,” Johnson said, “I’m a reasonable man. I been around some. I don’t mean I’m your basic man the fuckin’ world or any of that shit there, but I’ve been a few places and I had my share of pussy and I know what’s goin’ on, all right? I know what’s goin’ on. But I don’t care how much you know, where you been, what you seen, or what you’ve done, it’s still embarrassing when your old man’s hangin’ out the massage parlors. It’s fuckin’ embarrassing’s what it is, and there’s no two ways about it.

“So,” Johnson said, “naturally old Foster, the guy knows everything, naturally he finds out one way or the other what my old man’s doing over there in Cambridge three, four times a week. Or having done to him’d be more like it, actually. And the son of a bitch when my father retires, he calls me in his office and like I say he’s got this mean grin on his face, and he tells me, he gives me his personal gun and he tells me he wants it cleaned. And naturally I look at him like he just must’ve lost his goddamned mind, and I give him some lip. ‘Oh, good for you, Lieutenant,’ I say. ‘Take care of your weapon, and your weapon’ll take care of you.’ And he says: ‘Clean it.’ And I say: ‘Fuck you I will. Clean it yourself.’ And he says: ‘I’m not finished. Also: ’fore you come in tomorrow, pick up my suits down at Prestige,’ and he gives me a twenny-dollar bill and a claim check, ‘and when you get through there, stop off down at Bradlee’s and pick up a couple of them smoke alarms they got on sale this week.’ And he throws another twenny onna desk. And I look at him. I can’t believe this shit. And I say: ‘The fuck you think you are, handin’ me this crap? I haven’t got enough time, get my own errands done. The fuck makes you think I should run around for you?’

“ ‘Glad you asked,’ he says, and he whips open the desk drawer and pulls out this set of pictures, maybe half a dozen eight-by-tens, and they’re all pictures of my father, goin’ in and coming out, the Persian Delight. ‘Now lemme tell you a few things, Junior Johnson,’ Foster says. ‘The first thing is that the young lady’s name is Dawn and he always asks for her. Which he does because when she was a little kid, her mummy didn’t take good care of her teeth, which means the ones she’s got in her mouth now she can take out, and apparently this broad can suck a golf ball through a hundred feet of garden hose. And the second thing is that Dawn has got a brother who is doing time in Concord on a Middlesex sentence the Cambridge DA got for him, and she wants him paroled. Which the DA is willing to do if Dawn tells the grand jury about all the things that the Persian Delight does for people. Except that the DA needs a john, all right? Someone that will get up onna stand and corroborate what Dawn says. Which is a hard item to find, since most of the guys that go in there don’t care to testify about what they go in there for.

“ ‘So,’ he says,” Johnson said, “ ‘the question I have got for you is this: Are you gonna do what I want done? Or am I gonna tell my good friend the DA I know a guy who goes there and he’ll have to testify or I’ll yank his pension rights. You want some time to think about it? Or are you gonna be sensible, and do like I say?’ ”

Johnson shrugged. “So I’m cleaning his gun,” Johnson said.

“The son of a bitch,” Shanahan said.

“My father, you mean,” Johnson said.

“Your father I don’t,” Shanahan said. “I mean that fuckin’ Foster.”

Johnson shook his head. “You got to, Jake,” he said, “you got to find some way, you don’t just get all cranked off at somebody before you think things through. It ain’t Foster that’s my problem, all right? It’s my fuckin’ father, that’s my problem here. I get in here today about fifteen minutes late, which I got stuck in traffic and there’s no way I can help that, and I got Foster’s fuckin’ gun in my kit because it’s that time again, and you know what I get from him? From Gerard, I mean? ‘Where the hell’ve you been, you selfish little bastard? Don’t you know that Dawn’s got clients? She’s got her appointments? You’re supposed to be on time, you little bastard, you.’ And back and forth, and this and that, I tell you: it was awful.”

“And you’re taking this,” Shanahan said.

“Well,” Johnson said, “I don’t have a whole lotta goddamned choice, you know? I got the old man, and I got fucking Foster, and I got the fucking job onna force, and I got to keep all of them. You look at the whole thing serious, and there isn’t one of them I can get rid of, if I’m sensible. Which I am, because somebody sure should be.”

“I don’t believe this,” Shanahan said. “I don’t believe what I am hearing. What you’re telling me.”

“See?” Johnson said. “That’s what I told you. That’s exactly what I said.”