“I won’t say nothing,” Buddy said. “If he finds out, he’ll have somebody burn me. Honest to God he will. You know Harry.”
“Yeah. He still got that car lot on Commonwealth?”
Buddy nodded.
I turned and made a come-along gesture to Paul.
We walked down Main Street toward our car. Paul looked back once to see where Buddy was, but I didn’t bother.
In the car I said to Paul, “How do you feel about that scene?”
“It scared me.”
“I don’t blame you. If you’re not used to it, it’s disturbing,” I said. “In fact it’s sort of disturbing even if you are used to it.”
Paul was looking out the window.
“You change your mind,” I said. “You want to stay with Susan for a while till I get this straightened out?”
“No. I want to go with you.”
“Susan wouldn’t mind,” I said.
“Yes, she would,” Paul said.
I didn’t say anything. We went out Rutherford Avenue, across the Prison Point Bridge, and out onto Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side of the river. There were joggers on the riverbank and racing shells on the river, and a rich mix of students and old people walking along the drive. Past the Hyatt Regency I went around the circle and up onto the BU Bridge.
“Where we going?” Paul said.
“To see Harry Cotton,” I said.
“He’s the man Buddy said.”
“Yes. He’s a bad man.”
“Is he a crook?”
“Yes. He’s a major league crook. If your father knew him, your father was in deep.”
“Are you going to do the same to him?”
“As Buddy?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I just go along and see what happens. He’s a lot harder piece of material than Buddy. You sure you want to come?”
He nodded. “There isn’t anybody else,” he said.
“I’m telling you, Susan…”
“She doesn’t like me,” he said. “I want to stay with you.”
I nodded. “We’re stuck with each other, I guess.”
CHAPTER 25
Harry Cotton’s car lot was up Commonwealth Avenue, near the old Braves Field, in an old gas station that no longer sold gas. There were colored lights strung around the perimeter of the lot and around the useless gas pumps. The overhead door to the repair bay was down. It had been painted with various paints in the glass panes. There was no sign to identify the business, just eight or ten lousy-looking cars without license plates jammed into the lot. There was no one on the lot. But the door to the office side of the gas station was open. I went in. Paul came in behind me.
In the office there was an old walnut desk, a wooden swivel chair, a phone, and an overhead light with a dozen dead flies inside the globe. There was an ashtray in the shape of a rubber tire full of cigarette butts on the desk. In one corner of the room a Chow with snarled hair and a gray muzzle raised his head and looked at me as I came in.
At the desk talking on the phone was Harry Cotton. Harry went with the office. He was scrawny and potbellied, with long dirty fingernails and yellow teeth. His hair was about the color of a Norway rat and parted just above his left ear. It was a lot thinner than a Norway rat’s and while he tried to swoop it up and over, it didn’t make it very well, and a lot of pale scalp showed through. He was smoking a menthol cigarette, which he held between the tips of his first two fingers. Apparently he always held his cigarette that way because the two fingers were stained brown from the top joint to the tip. To the right of the Chow a door opened into the maintenance bay. It was empty except for a metal barrel and three folding chairs. Three men sat on the folding chairs around the barrel playing blackjack. They were drinking Four Roses out of paper cups.
Harry hung up the phone and looked at me. He needed a shave. The stubble that showed was gray. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and over it a long-sleeved gray sweat shirt tucked into black sharkskin pants with shiny knees. His belt was too long and an extended length of it stuck out from his belt loop like a black tongue. He wore black high-top sneakers. With his feet up on the desk, his white shins showing above sagging black socks, he looked like a central casting version of Fagin and he was worth maybe three and a half million dollars.
“What do you want?” he said. The dog stood and growled. Paul moved a little more behind me.
I said, “I’m in the market for a rat farm. Everyone says you’re the man to see.”
