If you wanted to buy a weapon without a background check, forge a driver’s license, steal Social Security numbers, or do anything else to make money outside the law, you had to tell Bingo.

People said that even in here, Bingo was calling the shots on the street.
Peter Fallon was not so sure. Life on the street followed the laws of physics, starting with the one about nature abhorring a vacuum. So some other thug had probably taken over. Besides, Bingo was in his sixties now, once a threatening man who never needed to threaten, always a small man who never seemed small … until they took away his scally cap and cigarettes and gave him a prison suit.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Bingo said, “I thought about sendin’ you some payback. Imagine if the sprinklers went off in that fancy bookshop of yours.”
“You’re not in here because of me,” answered Peter Fallon. “You’re in here because you killed two people … at least.”
“Shit happens.”
“So … why am I here?”
Bingo looked to his right and his left: a black man in his fifties, a young Hispanic, both talking on telephones to women on Peter’s side of the glass. Bingo turned back to Peter. “What I have is an address.”
“Address?”
“Two fourteen Boston Street.”
“Off Columbia Road?”
“Right. Dunkin’ Donuts at one end, Dunkin’ Donuts at the other, body shops, some nice three-deckers, a few dumps … If you keep goin’, you go into Southie.”
“What’s there?”
Bingo’s eyes shifted again. “Guns.”
“Guns?”
“Automatic weapons. Uzis, M-16s. AK clones.”
“What does that have to do with me? If it’s antique guns, I’m interested. But if somebody’s running guns and you’re mad because you’re not in on it—”
“Just shut the fuck up and listen.”
And for the first time, Peter Fallon saw something other than cold confidence in the eyes of Bingo Keegan.
“I’m a tough guy,” said Bingo, “but there’s guys in here who’d slice me open like a fuckin’ haddock for what I’m gonna tell you.”
“So why tell me?”
“Because, like I say, I’m a good American. Anyone sees me talkin’ to you, they’ll think I’m spillin’ the beans about stolen art or somethin’. Nobody in here gives a shit about that.”
“So … I should pretend you’re telling me who robbed the Gardner Museum twenty years ago?”
“Sure. Most people think I did it anyway.” Bingo leaned closer to the glass. “Now, there’s two kinds of Muslims, right?”
Peter shrugged.
“There’s the good ones and the bad ones.”
“I suppose.”
“The good ones, believe it or not, are the Niggers. The Black Muslims. They tell their people to get off welfare and stay in their own neighborhoods and keep the hell out of Southie.”
Peter didn’t say anything. He knew this was not a debate.
“The bad Muslims,” Bingo went on, “are the ones who fly planes into buildings and kill thousands of Americans.”
Peter nodded.
“Well, one of the good ones in here says that his boys on the outside don’t like what’s been happenin’ in their neighborhood.”
“How so?”
“There’s this florist, see. Has a storefront in Up-ham’s Corner. Name is Vartaby. Mo Vartaby.”
“Black?”
“No. A fuckin’ Syrian or somethin’. Come to this country about six years ago. Starts a florist business. Everybody likes him. But he goes to this house, this one crummy three-decker in Dorchester, every single day.”
“So?”
“All he delivers are roses … boxed fuckin’ roses.”
“So somebody loves somebody in a crummy three-decker. So what?”
“The boxes. That’s what.