“What’re you paying him an hour?” Mack said, after Alfred had slammed the door behind him.
“Wilfrid,” Scott said, “the minimum wage is two-ninety an hour. He isn’t worth that. But his mother works fifty hours a week trying to make a living, and she doesn’t get one, and his sister works and puts her share in the pot, and I pay Alfred four bucks an hour for eight hours a day and he usually doesn’t show up less than an hour and a half late and then he sits around reading comic books all night. But I know Mavis. I knew her before she got herself tied up with Roosevelt. She lived two houses down from me in Roxbury when I was growing up. She wasn’t a very pretty girl and she wasn’t very smart, or she never would’ve gotten herself tied up with Roosevelt, but she was a good kid then and she is now. When Roosevelt left I tried to help her out, and I guess I did, some, and when Alfred was coming up for parole and he needed a job to go to, I said I would give him one. That’s all.”
“Alfred,” Mack said, “Alfred is the most troublesome client I ever had. Bar none.”
“I know,” Scott said. “He’s the most unsatisfactory employee I ever had, too. You know how easy that job is? All he has to do is sit there and wait for the phone to ring at Boston City. When it does, he wakes up Herbert, who sleeps all the time, and they get in the wagon and go down there to the back door and ring the bell. The hospital people deliver the body to the door. Alfred and Herbert put it in the wagon and bring it back to my place. All they have to do is unload it and put it in the refrigerator. In the morning I come down, or Farber comes in. We do all the embalming work. Strictly delivery boys. Nothing more. Herbert sleeps and Alfred reads comic books.
“For that I pay Herbert three-fifty and Alfred four bucks an hour. I pay my accountant to do their withholding. I pay the government unemployment compensation, which I guess is my punishment for giving those two jobs. I pay Blue Cross. I pay Blue Shield. I keep the refrigerator in the basement stocked with Coca-Cola and they keep it stocked with beer and God knows what else. I hire them to work nights so I can get some sleep, and when I come downstairs in the morning there is always this sort of sharp smell in the air, as though somebody had been smoking something. Herbert is twenty-three. If things go right, he will get his high school diploma next spring. Then he wants to go to embalming school so he can be an undertaker like me. Herbert can slam-dunk with either hand, but he couldn’t embalm a cockroach. I don’t know what Alfred wants to do, except hit Peters with a tire iron for being attentive to his sister. Who is probably encouraging it. And I only have two of them. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Is Peters white?” Mack said.
“No,” Scott said, “he isn’t. He’s from North Carolina and he apparently likes the ladies pretty well, from everything I hear. And there is nothing wrong with that, I guess.”
“There’s a lot of it going around,” Mack said. “At least if some of the things I hear are true.”
“Yeah,” Scott said, “but, well, I broke up with her, you know.”
“No shit,” Mack said. “You broke up with Gail?”
“I had to,” Scott said. “She was bugging me all the time about leaving Crystal and gettin’ a divorce and us gettin’ married, and I can’t do that, for Christ sake.”
“Good-looking woman, though,” Mack said.
“Gorgeous,” Scott said. “Dumb as a rock, though. I dunno, maybe she isn’t. Who the hell knew anything when they were twenty-four, huh? I didn’t. I know you didn’t. The hell’re you gonna do, you know? Crystal would’ve taken the house and the business and every fuckin’ penny I own, I did that. Shit, Gail’d last about a week with me, if I was broke. Gail likes money.”
“Yeah,” Mack said.
“Maybe that means she isn’t stupid,” Scott said. “Could be, I suppose. Anyway, I had to drop her. Crystal don’t make any stink, I fool around a little, sometimes I don’t come home. She knows what’s goin’ on. But if I tell her I want a divorce, that is gonna be a different thing, my friend. She will come after me with a lawyer who swims in the water and nobody else goes in when he’s taking a dip. They put bulletins on the radio. I don’t think so. I had a good time with Gail, but I’m not pushing my luck like that, pissing away everything I got. I worked too hard for it.”
“Too bad Alfred doesn’t try a little of that formula,” Mack said.
“Alfred,” Scott said, “ahh, shit. You know that stuff about his mother borrowing the money to pay you? From her sister? She didn’t. She told Alfred that, but she told me the truth.”
“I didn’t make a dime on that case,” Mack said. “I was lucky I came close to breaking even. That trial, all those hearings? Day after day I spend listening to Alfred lie to me and then going around and finding out he lied to me and going back to Alfred and having him tell me some more lies, so I can start the whole procedure again? Worst case I ever had. When he went in for sentencing and the judge asked me if I wanted to make a plea for him, I was going to ask for the death penalty. The only reason the judge gave Alfred five was because he knew me and he knew Alfred and he felt sorry for me. If it’d been somebody else representing Alfred, Alfred would’ve gotten life. Jesus, what a kid. The jury loved him.”
“I can imagine,” Scott said. “But that really was all she could raise. She had a pension she built up working as a cleaning lady in the Roslindale post office, and she cashed it in. That was all she had.”
“That,” Mack said, “and one goddamned mean kid. What the hell is bothering him, anyway?”
“Well,” Scott said, “the cop, for openers.”
“The cop, the cop,” Mack said. “The cop is the current excuse, like the previous victim was the previous excuse. Should I go and see the kid’s mother?”
“You probably should,” Scott said. “You go down there and talk to her, she might be able to throw some light on this whole thing.”
“Mavis Davis,” Mack said. “Okay, I’ll do it. Even if she does rhyme with herself.”
9
Billy Malatesta parked the white unmarked car next to a fireplug on Jersey Street. He shut off the headlights and sat for a moment in the dark, watching the street behind by using the rear-view mirrors, switching his gaze back to study the street in front of him. The white sign with the Red Sox logo up on the left advertised three night games with the California Angels, but Fenway Park lay in darkness with the team on the road, and there was no other automobile traffic.
Malatesta, in a blue blazer, yellow shirt, grey slacks and black loafers, got out of the car and locked it. He inspected the street again. The wholesale office furniture store was dark; there were no lights burning in the second-story warehouse rooms. A man wearing a scalley cap and a coat sat in the doorway of the loading platform near the street light, drinking every so often from a bottle in a brown bag.
Malatesta went up the street toward Fenway Park and stopped at a panelled wooden doorway illuminated by a sixty-watt bulb. There was an engraved brass plaque on the centre panel of the door, under a brass lion’s-head knocker. The plaque read: Club 1812. Malatesta fished a key from his pocket and inserted it into the polished brass lock. He opened the door, entered, and closed it behind him.
The foyer of the club was carpeted with thick green plush. He wiped his feet and walked past the cigarette machine and the empty cloakroom. The main room of the club was small, able to accommodate fifteen or sixteen customers at the bar, which was set off from the dining area by a waist-high partition crowned with knurled spindles that rose to about two feet below the ceiling. The tables in the dining area had red cloths on them, with white napkins and ornate silverware at each of the place settings. The water glasses were crystal; they were turned upside down at the vacant places. There were six men eating steak and drinking Val-policella at the table farthest to the rear, and three men hunched over a table in the middle of the room, to Malatesta’s left. They had a bottle of Canadian Club, a soda siphon and a silver ice bucket in front of them. They were examining papers.