Brutal by Kevin Weeks Page B

into the parking lot. I’d been at the Harborside no more than fifteen minutes when Jimmy pulled the Tow Truck in nose-first so our driver’s sides were facing, and handed me a walkie-talkie and binoculars. The Olds already had a police scanner. He told me that Halloran was sitting in the window of the Pier restaurant, about 400 yards away from where I was parked, so I’d need to get a little closer. When I was settled, I was to keep an eye on the restaurant and let him know when Balloonhead got up from his seat.
    There was no doubt Halloran fit his code name perfectly, with hisround, melon-shaped head that looked like it had been filled with a blast of helium. At six-four, he was powerfully built and barrel-chested, a big guy. If you ever see the movie The Brink’s Job with Peter Falk, made in the late 1970s, you might see Brian Halloran. I have no idea how Halloran got the role. Maybe from the Teamsters’ local? When Specs O’Keefe is in a jail scene, Halloran plays the prison guard who hits him from behind; the perfect role for this bully.
    Before Jimmy took off, I noticed a man in the back seat of the Tow Truck, his face hidden behind a dark blue ski mask. He raised himself up and waved at me. I waved back with no idea who he was. Then I drove a short distance to Anthony’s Pier Four parking lot and backed in so I could see the whole front of the Pier restaurant across the street. By then it was five or five-thirty.
    I sat in the car, the windows open, trying to look inconspicuous as I moved the binoculars from my lap to my eyes and stared into the window of the restaurant. I kept an earplug in my ear so I could listen to the police scanner without anyone hearing the chatter of the scanner through my open window. I kept wishing I had a hat to change my appearance so no one would be able to recognize me. Unfortunately, there were no hats in Jimmy’s Olds. From that day on, no matter what car I was driving, I made sure that I had a few hats available to put on at a moment’s notice.
    That early in the evening, there was nothing particularly interesting coming through the scanner, just the typical domestic violence stuff and a few minor incidents. It’s funny, but an ordinary person might not pay much attention to a guy sitting in his car, staring at a restaurant through a set of binoculars. But a criminal would. I’d want to get his plate and find out who he was and why he was staked out there. But that spring evening, none of the people walking up and down the waterfront seemed interested in me or what I was doing. And I was grateful that I didn’t see anybody I knew.
    So I kept sitting there, staring straight ahead, through the binocularsat the 100 feet separating me from Balloonhead. As I looked at Halloran at a table of four having a few beers, I was glad it was him and not me having his last beers. Even though I was carrying a gun at my waist, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be using it. My role was basically the lookout, to call the hit in. Not that it made a difference who pulled the trigger. Everyone played a part to make it happen, and I was playing mine. Jimmy had often used the analogy of a finely oiled machine or a watch when discussing jobs. Everyone had to do his part for everything to go smoothly. All the little cogs in the watch had to move perfectly. If one wheel stopped or broke, then the watch would stop working. More important than committing the crime was getting away with it. And in order for that to happen, everything had to go just right. It didn’t matter who pulled the trigger. The person who called in the hit or drove the crash car or listened to the scanner was equally as important. There were times when we would stop before the crime was committed, like with a shakedown, because one of us didn’t think everything would work perfectly. That afternoon, if I wasn’t there to call in the hit, Halloran would have gotten away. My role, I