Stevie nodded. “His entire prostate’s in a biohazard bag at Brigham and Women’s. I hear his intestinal tract’s next.”
“Too bad,” Bubba said.
Stevie shrugged. “Hey, it’s nature, right? You live, you die, people cry, and then they think about where they’re gonna eat.” Stevie shoveled five burgers onto a plate the size of a gladiator’s shield, followed them with a half dozen hot dogs and some chicken. He held the plate over his shoulder and said, “Come get it, you fat fucking humps.”
Bubba leaned back on his heels and dug his hands into his trench coat as one of the blobs took the plate from Stevie’s hand and walked it back to the condiment table.
Stevie closed the grill cover. He placed the spatula on the grill tray and look a long puff on his cigar.
“Bubba, you go mingle, get something to eat. Me and your friend going to take a walk around the yard.”
Bubba shrugged and stayed where he was.
Stevie Zambuca held out a hand. “Kenzie, right? Walk with me.”
We walked off the small porch and down into the yard, made our way between empty white tables and lawn sprinklers that were shut off, down to a small garden encased in brick that hosted a sickly array of dandelions and crocuses.
Beside the garden was a wooden porch swing hanging from metal posts and a rod that had once supported a clothesline. Stevie Zambuca sat on the right side of the porch swing and patted the wood.
“Have a seat, Kenzie.”
I sat.
Stevie leaned back and took a long toke from his cigar, blew the smoke back out as he lifted his legs off the ground, held his heels over the grass for a moment, seemed fascinated by his white running shoes.
“You known Rogowski, what, your whole life?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He always crazy?”
I looked up at Bubba as he crossed the porch and fixed himself a cheeseburger at the condiment table.
“He’s always followed the beat of his own drummer,” I said.
Stevie Zambuca nodded. “I heard all the stories,” he said. “Lived on the streets since he was, what, eight or something, you and some of your friends used to bring him food, shit like that. Then Morty Schwartz, the old Jew bookie, took him in, raised him till he died.”
I nodded.
“They say the only things he cares about are dogs, Vincent Patriso’s granddaughter, the ghost of Morty Schwartz, and you.”
I watched Bubba take a seat away from the rest of the men and eat his burger.
“Is that true?” Stevie Zambuca asked.
“I guess,” I said.
He patted my knee. “You remember Jack Rouse?”
Jack Rouse had been the kingpin of the Irish mob until he disappeared a few years back.
“Sure.”
“He put a hit on you not long before he disappeared. An open hit, Kenzie. And you know why it didn’t go down?”
I shook my head.
Stevie Zambuca tilted his chin up in the direction of the porch. “Rogowski. He walked into a card game filled with capos and said anything happened to you, he’d hit the streets armed, kill every soldier he saw until someone killed him.”
Bubba finished his hamburger and carried his paper plate back for a second. The men near the condiment table drifted away and left him alone. Bubba was always alone. It was his choice but his price, too, for being so unlike the rest of his species.
“Now that’s loyalty,” Stevie Zambuca said. “I try and instill that in my men, but I can’t. They’re only as loyal as their wallets are thick. See, you can’t teach loyalty. You can’t instill it. It’s like trying to teach love. Can’t be done. It’s either in your heart, or it ain’t. You ever get caught bringing him food?”
“By my parents?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure.”
“You catch an ass-whipping?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Several.”
“But you kept stealing food from your family’s table, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Why?”
I shrugged. “It’s just what we did. We were kids.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s loyalty. That’s love, Kenzie. You can’t put that in someone. And,” he said with a stretch and a sigh, “you can’t take it out, either.”
I waited. The point, I was pretty sure, was coming.
“You can’t take it out,” Stevie Zambuca repeated. He leaned back and put his arm around my shoulder. “We got this guy does some work for us. Sort of like private contracting, if you know what I mean. He isn’t employed by the organization, but he provides things sometimes. You follow?”
“I guess.”
“This guy? He’s important to me. I really can’t overstress how important.”
He took a few puffs off his cigar, kept his arm around me, and gazed out at his small yard.
“You’re bothering this guy,” he said eventually. “You’re annoying him. That annoys me.”
“Wesley,” I said.
“Oh, his fucking name? That don’t matter. You know who I’m talking about. And I’m telling you, you’re going to stop. You’re going to stop now. If he decides to walk up to you and piss on your head, you’re not even going to reach for a towel. You’re gonna say, ‘Thanks,’ and wait to see if he’s got anything more to give you.”
“This guy,” I said, “destroyed the life of—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Stevie said mildly, and tightened his hand against my shoulder. “I don’t give a shit about you or your problems. My problems are the only thing that matter here. You are an annoyance. I’m not asking you to stop. I’m telling you. Take a good look at your friend up there, Kenzie.”
I looked. Bubba sat down again, bit into his burger.
“He’s a great earner. I’d miss a guy like that. But if I hear you’re bothering this independent contractor friend of mine? Making inquiries? Mentioning his name to people? I hear any of that, and I’ll whack out your buddy. I’ll cut his fucking head off and mail it to you. And then I’ll kill you, Kenzie.” He patted my shoulder several times. “We clear?”
“We’re clear,” I said.
He withdrew his arm, puffed his cigar, leaned forward with elbows on his knees. “That’s great. When he finishes his burger, you take your Irish ass out of my home.” He stood and began to walk toward the deck. “And wipe your feet on the mat before you walk back through the house. Fucking rug in the living room is a bitch to clean.”
23
Bubba can barely read or write. He has just enough rudimentary skills in that area to decipher weapons manuals and other simple instruction texts as long as they’re accompanied by diagrams. He can read his own press clippings, but it takes him half an hour, and he runs into trouble if he can’t sound out the words phonetically. He has no grasp of complex dynamics in any type of human intercourse, knows so little about politics that as recently as last year I had to explain to him what the difference between the House and the Senate was, and his ignorance of current events is so total that the only thing he understands about Lewinsky is as a verb.
But he is not stupid.
There are those who have assumed, fatally as it turned out, that he was, and countless cops and DAs have managed through all their concerted effort to imprison him only twice, both times on weapons infractions so minor compared to what he was truly guilty of that the terms seemed more like vacation time than punishment.
Bubba has traversed the world a few times over and can tell you where to get the best vodka in former Eastern bloc villages you’ve never heard of, how to find a clean brothel in West Africa, and where to get a cheeseburger in Laos. Sitting atop tables scattered throughout the three-story warehouse he calls home, Bubba has constructed from memory Popsicle-stick models of several cities he’s visited; I once checked his version of Beirut against a map and found a small street in Bubba’s model the mapmakers had missed.
But where Bubba’s intell
igence is most prominent and most unnerving is in his innate ability to read people without having appeared to even notice them. Bubba can smell an undercover cop from a mile away; he can find a lie in the quiver of an eyelash; and his knack for sensing an ambush is so legendary in his circles that his competitors long ago quit trying and simply allowed him to carve out his slice of pie.
Bubba, Morty Schwartz told me not long before he died, was an animal. Morty meant it as a compliment. Bubba had flawless reflexes, unswerving instinct, and primal focus, and none of these skills were diluted or compromised by conscience. If Bubba had ever had conscience or guilt, he’d left them back in Poland along with his mother tongue when he was five years old.
“So what’d Stevie say?” Bubba asked as we drove through Maverick Square and headed for the tunnel.
I had to be careful here. If Bubba suspected Stevie was using him against me, he’d kill Stevie and half his crew, consequences be damned.
“Nothing much.”
Bubba nodded. “He just called you to his house to shoot the shit?”
“Something like that.”
“Sure,” Bubba said.
I cleared my throat. “He told me Wesley Dawe has diplomatic immunity. I’m to stay away.”
Bubba rolled down his window as we approached the tollbooths outside the Sumner Tunnel. “What could some yuppie psycho be worth to Stevie Zambuca?”
“Apparently a lot.”
Somehow Bubba managed to squeeze his Hummer in between the tollbooths, handed the operator three bucks, and rolled his window back up as we joined the eight lanes trying to cram their way into two.
“But how?” he said, and maneuvered the double-wide freakish machine through the throng of metal like it was a letter opener.
I shrugged as we entered the tunnel. “Wesley’s already proven he has access to one psychiatrist’s files. Maybe he has access to others.”
“And?”
“And,” I said, “that access could give him private information on judges, cops, contractors, you name it.”
“So what are you gonna do?” Bubba asked.
“Back off,” I said.
His faced was bathed in the sickly yellow wash of the tunnel lights when he turned his head and looked at me. “You?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m no dummy.”
“Huh,” Bubba said softly, and looked back out the windshield.
“I’ll just let things cool down,” I said, hating the hint of desperation I heard in my voice. “Figure out another way to come at Wesley.”
“There ain’t no other way,” Bubba said. “You either take this guy down or you don’t. You do, and Stevie’ll figure out it was you no matter how you cover your tracks.”
“So, what, you’re saying I should take down Wesley and hand over the rest of my life to Stevie Zambuca?”
“I can talk to him,” Bubba said. “Reason with him.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Yeah, no. You talk to him, right? And let’s say his position doesn’t change. Where’s that put you? Asking for something he ain’t going to give.”
“So then I ice his ass.”
“And then? You whack a made guy, everyone’s going to say, No problem?”
Bubba shrugged as we rolled through the mouth of the tunnel and out into the North End. “I don’t think that far ahead.”
“I do.”
He gave me another shrug, a harder one. “So you’re just going to back down?”
“Yeah. That okay with you?”
“Fine,” he said distantly. “Fine, man. Whatever.”
He didn’t look at me when he dropped me off. He kept his eyes on the road, his head moving slightly in time with the chug of the engine.
I got out of the Hummer and Bubba spoke with his eyes still locked on the avenue. “Maybe you should get out.”
“Get out of where?”
“This business.”
“Why’s that?”
“Fear kills, man. Shut the door, will you?”
I closed the door and watched him drive off.
When he reached the light, he slammed on the brakes and then the Hummer was suddenly careening back toward me in reverse. I looked down the avenue, saw a red Escort moving forward in Bubba’s lane. The driver looked up, saw the Hummer hurtling backward toward her. She veered left into the passing lane put her hand on the horn, and passed Bubba in a blare of indignant noise, middle finger predictably extended so that for a moment neither of her hands were steering.
Bubba flipped his own bird at the rear of the Escort as he hopped out of the Hummer and slammed his hand on the hood.
“It’s me.”
“What?”
“It’s me!” he bellowed. “That piece of shit is using me, ain’t he?”
“No, he—”
“He can’t threaten Angie, ’cause she’s connected. So it was me.”
“Bubba, he threatened me. Okay?”
He threw back his head and screamed, “Bullshit!” at the sky. He dropped his head and came around the car, and for a moment I was pretty sure he was going to pummel me.
“You,” he screamed, shoving a finger in my face, “don’t back down. You never have, which is why my second fucking career has been saving your ass.”
“Bubba—”
“And I don’t mind!” he yelled.
A group of kids turned the corner, saw Bubba in full horror tilt, and made a beeline for the other side of the avenue.
“Don’t fucking lie to me anymore,” Bubba said. “Don’t. If you or her lie to me, it fucking hurts. It makes me want to go maim someone. Anyone!” He punched his own chest so hard that if it had belonged to anyone else the sternum would have shattered like crockery. “Stevie threatened me, didn’t he?”
“What if he did?”
Bubba wheeled at the air with his huge flailing arms and spittle shot from his mouth. “I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll fucking rip his goddamn large intestine out and strangle him with it. I’ll squeeze his fucking head until—”
“No,” I said. “Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
“That’s the bind. That’s what Wesley wants. This threat didn’t come from Stevie, it came from Wesley. That’s how the fucker works.”
Bubba bent, took a long breath. He looked like a hunk of granite about to come gradually to life.
“You lost me,” he said eventually.
“I’ll bet,” I said slowly, “that Wesley knows Angie’s connected, knows the only way to get to me is through you. I’m telling you, he gave Stevie the idea to threaten you, knowing that, worst-case scenario, you’d find out, flip out, and get us all killed.”
“Huh,” he said softly. “This guy’s smart.”
A blue and white pulled alongside us and the cop riding shotgun rolled down his window.
“Everything okay, gents?” He looked vaguely familiar.
“Fine,” I said.
“Hey, you, big fella.”
Bubba turned his head, met the cop’s gaze with a grimace.
“You’re Bubba Rogowski, ain’t you?”
Bubba looked off down the avenue.
“Kill anyone lately, Bubba?”
“It’s been, like, hours, Officer.”
The cop chuckled. “That your Hummer?”
Bubba nodded.
“Move it into a space, or I’ll ticket it.”
“Fine.” Bubba turned back to me.
“Now, Rogowski,” the cop said.
Bubba gave me a bitter smile and shook his head. Then he walked out past the cruiser and climbed in the Hummer as the cops watched with wide, satisfied grins. Bubba pulled forward and found a spot large enough to accommodate him about a hundred yards down the avenue.
“You know your friend’s a scumbag?” the cop asked me.
I shrugged.
“That could make you a scumbag by association if you’re not careful.”
I recognized the cop now. Mike Gourgou
ras, allegedly a bagman for Stevie Zambuca, Stevie sending him by to make sure the message sank in.
“Might wanna consider distancing yourself from a guy like that.”
“Okay.” I held up a hand, smiled. “Good advice.”
Gourgouras narrowed his small dark eyes at me. “You busting my balls?”
“No, sir.”
He gave me a smile. “Be careful in your choices, Mr. Kenzie.” His window rolled up with a whir and then the cruiser pulled down the avenue, beeped once at Bubba as he walked back down the sidewalk toward me, then turned the corner.
“Stevie’s boys,” Bubba said.
“You noticed?”
“Yeah.”
“You calm?”
He shrugged. “I’m getting there, maybe.”
“All right,” I said. “How do we get Stevie off our ass?”
“Angie.”
“She’s not going to like calling in that marker.”
“She has no choice.”
“How do you figure?”
“With us dead, you know how boring her life would be? Shit, man, she’d about shrivel up and die.”
He had a point.
I called Sallis & Salk, only to be told Angie didn’t work there anymore.
“Why not?” I asked the receptionist.
“There was, I believe, an incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
“That, I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
“Well, could you tell me whether she quit or got fired?”
“No, I cannot.”
“Wow. You can’t tell me much of anything, can you?”
“I can tell you this phone conversation is over,” she said, and hung up.
I called Angie at home, got her voice mail. She could still be home, though. She turns her ringer off a lot when feeling antisocial.
“Incident?” Bubba said as we drove over to the South End. “Like an international incident?”
I shrugged. “With Ange, I wouldn’t rule it out.”
“Wow,” Bubba said. “How cool would that be?”
We found her at home, as I’d expected. She’d been cleaning, scrubbing her hardwood floors with Murphy’s Oil Soap, blasting Patti Smith’s Horses through the apartment so loud, we’d had to shout at her through an open window because she couldn’t hear the bell.