Cogan's Trade (16 page)

“Talk to me about that when I get the dough,” Russell said.

“Russ,” Frankie said, “this whole town’s dry, and it’s been dry for three or four weeks. There’s more guys running into drugstores now with guns’n you ever saw. They got Goldfinger and that was the end of that. They tossed three guys with shipments this week, for Christ sake. The minute the word gets out, somebody’s in with something, everybody goes right out of their minds. There’s more heat in this town on that’n there is in the FBI, for Christ sake. Unload, Russ. Let somebody else do a hundred years or so, they catch him with it.”

“Not till I hit it,” Russell said. “Look, I’m into this, over twelve K, right? I put it to a guy, fast, I don’t hit it, what do I get? I’m gonna get, even with things the way they are, no more’n fifteen, sixteen. I take it up a step, I can hit that stuff a whole step with the stuff I’m getting, I can move it to two guys and get twenny-five.”

“It’s stupid,” Frankie said. “It’s fuckin’ stupid. That’s a thousand dollars a year.”

“Look,” Russell said, “I don’t need nothing, make me dumb. You know that, you and Squirrel. Squirrel knows it, at least. Maybe you still think we were smart, doing that. You’re just as dumb as I am. You just come around and stroke me some, I’ll do any dumb fuckin’ thing you can think of. The thing is, though, you and me’re different. When this’s over, I’m through, doing dumb things for guys. I do dumb things for me, maybe, and then, I get grabbed, okay, at least I was doing them for me. Which means, I get to keep all the fuckin’ money. I don’t have to give Squirrel nothing for being smart enough to see I’m stupid any more.”

“That worked out beautiful,” Frankie said.

“Sure,” Russell said, “fuckin’ cheesecake. Of course there’s a contract out on us and all, but it worked beautiful. You and me, we got different ideas of beautiful, too.”

“The fuck’re you talking about?” Frankie said.

“You,” Russell said, “me, and the Squirrel. There’s a contract out on us. I hang around here too long, which I’m not gonna do, I’m gonna be as dead as you guys are. I’m gonna go to Montreal. I know a guy that’s got something going up there and that’s where I’m gonna go. And I’ll tell you something: if I didn’t, I’d still go.”

“For what?” Frankie said.

“Cut the shit, Frank,” Russell said, “for the Trattman game. The fuck’s the matter with you?”

“What the fuck’s the matter with
you
?” Frankie said. “You’re the one that’s got something the matter with him. Where’re you getting this fairy story? You flying or something?”

“Frank,” Russell said, “I can add and subtract. There’s gotta be a contract. Has to be one.”

“Nobody knows we did it,” Frankie said.

“I think they do,” Russell said.

“They went for it,” Frankie said.

“That’s good,” Russell said. “You go ahead and believe that. It’ll make you feel better while the guy’s catching up with you. Who’s the guy that does the work? Tell him when he sees you, sorry I couldn’t wait around. Tell him I went to, tell him I went back inna service, I liked it better when it was a pretty good chance I’d at least get a chance to shoot back if they missed me the first time.”

“Russell,” Frankie said, “Trattman’s practically dead. They beat him shitless. You didn’t know that, did you?”

“Shit,” Russell said, “of course I knew that. Kenny told me that.”

“Kenny,” Frankie said, “this’s Kenny Gill we’re talking about, right?”

“Right,” Russell said. “Kenny was telling me, well, he didn’t give me the guy’s name, but it hadda be Trattman. We’re talking, we got all them fuckin’ dogs inna car and we got all this time and it’s raining and everything, I said to him: ‘You know, this really sucks. This is really a shitty way to make a couple dollars. I thought it was gonna be easy, and it fuckin’ sucks.’

“ ‘Well,’ he tells me, we get to talking, ‘there’s not very many things a guy can do.’ And he tells me, there’s a guy, runs a card game some place, Kenny don’t even know who he is.”

“
Bullshit
,” Frankie said.

“No bullshit,” Russell said, “he didn’t know the guy’s name.”

“Kenny Gill works for Dillon,” Frankie said.

“So fuckin’ what?” Russell said.

“Anything Kenny knows, he got from Dillon,” Frankie said. “He’s too goddamned stupid to figure out anything for himself. If Kenny knows a guy who runs a card game, Dillon knows, and there was some kind of reason he had for telling Kenny. Nobody ever tells Kenny nothing unless it’s something they got to tell him because they want him to do something for them.”

“They did,” Russell said, “that’s what he said. He said there’s this guy, he knows these two guys, him and his brother hadda go out and do the number onna guy that runs a card game. Hadda be Trattman. Because the guy knocked over his own game and they hadda teach him something for a change. And them guys, well, Kenny knows them, is all, and they asked him if he wanted to come along, they’d give him some of the money, but he was going with me and the dogs and he couldn’t. That’s all. ‘I give that up,’ he was saying. ‘It
don’t pay anything and it’s dangerous. I bet them guys didn’t get more’n two hundred bucks, and look at the chances they hadda take, huh? The fuck can you do with a hundred bucks. Nothin’.’ That’s all he said.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, “and what’d you say, case Dillon didn’t have the whole story before?”

“I didn’t say shit,” Russell said.

“You horse’s cock,” Frankie said.

“I didn’t say fuckin’ shit,” Russell said. “The guy told me something. I listened. He never even, I didn’t, if I didn’t already know something, I wouldn’t even’ve known it was Trattman. You think I was gonna say something, the guy’s telling me they just beat up a guy that they know did it before? They just beat him up? Is that all they’re gonna do to him? No, I said nothing. Shit, all I could think about was not saying anything, and getting out of here before they find out I’m back.”

“You better not’ve,” Frankie said. “John’s gonna be mad as hell about this.”

“Oh,” Russell said, “big fuckin’ deal. I got the Squirrel mad. I’ll probably have to go to bed without no fuckin’ supper. Fuck him.”

“Y
OU THINK HE DID
,” Amato said.

“John,” Frankie said, “I
know
he did. Him and Kenny’re in that car for three days. Non-fuckin’-stop. He mustVe spilled his fuckin’ guts. I know the guy. I never would’ve figured him for it, but it’s the only thing that could’ve happened. He was trying to warn me, is all. He finally seen what he did and he was trying to tell me, I’m inna shit. You and me both.”

“So’s he,” Amato said.

“Not in Montreal,” Frankie said. “In Montreal he’s as clean as he can be.”

“There’s guys in Montreal, too, you know,” Amato said.

“I know it,” Frankie said, “and you know it. He apparently doesn’t. It don’t make no difference. It’s what he thinks. He thinks we’re inna shit around here, and the thing that proves it is, he thinks he is, and he thinks so from talking too much to a guy that works for Dillon. Kenny must’ve said something, finally, that tipped him. That’s why.”

“You brought him in,” Amato said. “I asked you all kinds of things about him, you remember. You said he was all right. Remember that?”

“I made a mistake,” Frankie said. “How the fuck’d I know this was gonna happen? He was Mister Tight-Asshole before, there was nothing you could’ve done to the guy, make him say anything. I thought he’d do it and that’d be the end of it. I didn’t know he was gonna go to Confession to Kenny Gill.”

“You used to hand me a good deal of shit about the Doctor,” Amato said. “He was all my fault.”

“He was your mistake,” Frankie said. “I did a lot of time for your mistake. Now what I want, I don’t want to get dead for my mistake. I tell you what, we get this straightened out? You can give me all kinds of shit if you want. I know it. I didn’t know he was motor-mouth, but I brought him in and he was. Okay, so what do we do now? I didn’t know he was gonna start off and be the big operator. ‘I can’t waste no time, I just knock over this guy’s game for a hundred thou.’ I thought he was smart. Now I see, he wasn’t, and he’s gonna save his ass and then we get the shit. Fuck him.”

“You’re sure about this Gill kid,” Amato said.

“I’m surer about him’n I am about fuckin’ God,” Frankie said. “Ever go the zoo, see an ape? That’s Kenny. Looks like a fuckin’ ape, he’s all bowlegged and he’s got real short legs, too. This huge body, and he walks, he walks like a fuckin’ monkey. Hands practically drag onna ground when he walks. You looked at him, you’d think somebody skinned him and put a pair of pants on him and took away his fuckin’ club. And, he’s stupid. He knows things, he knows how to do things, because somebody told him and he listened and the guy talked real slow, too, nice and loud. Kenny can listen. Otherwise, he’s stupid. His idea of talking is, he listens, and somebody asks him something, he goes uh, uh, uh. That’s when he feels good. When he don’t feel good, he don’t say anything. You ask him something, he’ll sit there and he’ll stare at you, and he thinks about it. He tries to think about it. He’s not very good and he’s not very fast. You got an hour or so, he’ll do his best. That’s what he does. Then he might say something. It’ll be just the same thing you said to him. He always agrees with you. Kenny knows about, probably, two things. You hit one of them, you can talk. Otherwise, no. And he breathes. He’s good at breathing.”

“Ah,” Amato said, “well, at least he shouldn’t be too tough.”

“He did work for Dillon,” Frankie said.

“Wyatt Earp did things for Dillon,” Amato said. “The way I get it, I seen him myself, don’t forget, don’t matter what anybody did for Dillon. Dillon’s gonna die.”

“You remember Callahan?” Frankie said.

“No,” Amato said.

“Sure,” Frankie said, “the lawyer, there. Used to work for the man some times. Car blew up.”

“Right,” Amato said.

“Kenny Gill did that,” Frankie said.

“That happened,” Amato said, “we’re inna can.”

“That’s how I found out, it’s Kenny,” Frankie said. “China told me, he was up onna habe and his wife give him the word. Six sticks on the fire wall.”

“That’s an awful way to do a guy,” Amato said.

“Callahan’d agree with you,” Frankie said, “lost most of his stuff in that. Blew his ass off, for one thing. Would’ve gotten all of him if he had the door all the way closed, he hit the switch. China told me: ‘Kenny’s nuts. He’d do anything Dillon told him, Dillon said: “Kenny, cut your dick off,” Kenny’d cut his dick off, take it right out and start chopping away. There’s a lot of guys around that’re afraid of Dillon and they don’t even know it’s Kenny they’re really afraid of.’ ”

“I better have Connie start the car inna morning?” Amato said.

“That’s an idea,” Frankie said, “and if it don’t go off, have her drive over and start mine for me. No, but we got to think of something. I thought, the first thing I thought of, we oughta take Russell out. That’s the very first thing I thought of to do. I don’t like it, I never did nothing like that, but that son of a bitch, if I’m in the
hole, he’s the one that got me there, and I could kill him for it, I really could.”

“That gonna be such a good idea?” Amato said.

“No,” Frankie said. “He already did the damage anyway, and if we put him to sleep it’ll just prove it to everybody, that we’re the guys that did it. One way or the other, he’s gonna go anyway. He’s either right, and they’re gonna kill us all, or else he’s gonna go to Canada or he’s gonna get caught with that stuff and go to the jug and he’s never gonna come out again. No, right now the main thing we got to worry about is Kenny. I don’t think they’re gonna send Kenny around to see me. I know him and I wouldn’t let him get inside a block of me, I’d take him out. So they got to get somebody else, and that’s gonna take them a little time.”

“Plus which,” Amato said, “I wonder if they’d do it, the way things’re going right now. Too much noise.”

“They’d do it,” Frankie said. “We got to start being very careful and looking around and everything.”

“No,” Amato said, “nope, I can’t figure it. It was Trattman’s game got hit. It was Trattman got beat up. Trattman didn’t have no other reason, get beat up, and they don’t go around beating guys like that up like that for the fun of it. Nope, they’re not looking for us. Nobody’s even thinking about that thing any more.”

“John,” Frankie said, “look, I hope you’re right. I wanna live a long time. I just got started and I like it.”

“I’m right,” Amato said.

“You don’t mind, though,” Frankie said, “I look around a little.”

“Frankie,” Amato said, “get as nervous as you like. We did it and we’re clear. I’m going over to Brockton a couple more times and tend to business. I’ll let you know when it’s time to stop worrying and go to work again.”