THE BLUE SUIT
“Do you ever get embarrassed, Josh? Do you embarrass the people who work for you? Well Carlo really embarrassed me last week with his bit about the longevity. He was wearing me. I wanted to hide.”
– The mayor’s Blue Suit to Josh Resnek Tuesday afternoon
I picked up the Blue Suit early in the morning Tuesday at the end of Abbott Avenue. It was windy as hell, blowing like a hurricane and not warm at all for the middle of April.
I sold my Honda Fit. I’m right now thinking about what I’m going to buy next – that is – what piece of junk will attract my attention! I’ve been driving around in my daughter’s Toyota Hybrid. She recently graduated from Boston University’s School of Communications. She’s home now. Each time I use her car I give her $50. She likes that. The hybrid gets 44 miles per gallon! Incredible really. The car is late model – almost new. The Blue Suit loved it.
“You’re moving up in the world,” he said to me when he plopped himself into the front passenger seat.
“I’m really impressed,” he added.
“Where too?” I asked him.
“Your call, big boy.” I took a closer look at him. He was dressed in blue, blue Addidas that is – blue Addidas sweat pants with white stripes, a blue Addidas shirt, blue Addidas track shoes and of all things, some heavy gold jewelry – a thick gold ring and a gangster type gold necklace.
“You didn’t have to get all dressed up for me,” I joked.
The Blue Suit didn’t think that was funny because he believed he was dressed up. I guess that’s how he feels when he’s in his Addidas finest.
“Where did you get all that gold?” I asked him.
“Did Carlo give it to you?”
He looked at me scornfully.
“Are you kidding. Carlo wouldn’t toss water down my throat if my stomach was on fire,” he answered.
“Come on. Carlo’s supposed to be real generous, isn’t he?” I asked.
“Are you losing your mind, Josh. Carlo is cheap. He throws c-notes around like manhole covers,” the Blue Suit added.
“He’s so cheap he doesn’t like to get me cleaned. Mainly, he knows how much I like a good dry cleaning at the cleaners and whatever else must be done to take care of me. For me, a good dry cleaning is like a steam bath and a rub. You’d think he’d care about that after all the times he wears me. Forget it. He treats me like garbage. Talking with you doesn’t help the situation, Josh. It makes things much worse. When he knows I’ve been talking with you he grows really irritable. Since the council took away that $40,000 a year he was collecting, he pretends to be tightening his belt just a bit.”
“Is he pissed off about the longevity being stripped from him?” I asked.
“Are you kidding! He’s wild. He doesn’t know how it happened. He can’t come to terms with it. He cringes every time Capone speaks about it being a theft and fraud. Carlo knows Capone has it right. He just wants Capone and everyone else to go away, to disappear and to leave him alone.”
“Ha. Ha. That’s pretty funny,” I laughed. “If Carlo wants to be alone, he’ll have to give up his position.”
“What does Carlo do everyday?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“He stays in the house most of the time. He takes his dog for a
walk in the cemetery. He’ll drive to get an ice cream. Other than that, he’s watching television and talking scribble on his cell.”
“Oh. I didn’t know Carlo plays Scrabble.” I answered.
“I said scribble not Scrabble, Josh,” the Blue Suit answered. “Hey. I saw you at the council meeting the other night. He wore
you.”
“Yeah,” the Blue Suit sighed. “He didn’t bother putting on a tie.
He makes me look bad.”
“What about you being embarrassed?”
“What’s that all about?” I asked.
“That effort he made to finish off the longevity bit was lame.
How anyone can believe him, Demas and Mejia is beyond me. He laughed about it with Jerry on his cell all the way home.
“What idiots they are,” I heard him say to Jerry. “I showed all of them, didn’t I?” I heard Carlo add.
‘I could have told him right there and then that he had convinced only those who he pays to shake their heads in agreement with him. Not many others believed him,” the Blue Suit told me.
“I don’t know how or why law enforcement doesn’t come down on him for a $180,000 theft, as Capone like to call it.”
“Yeah. That kind of protection doesn’t last forever,” I said to the Blue.
“Nothing lasts forever,” I added.
“It sure seems forever,” the Blue Suit replied.
“What about his time at the casino last week? How’d that go?”
I asked the Blue Suit.
“It wasn’t the biggest time he ever had. It wasn’t the smallest either. He raised some badly needed dough. I bet he raised something like $50,000. Most of it is going for attorney’s fees that are adding up. He’s not very happy about all the court stuff going on. Let’s face it, court is the last place Carlo wants to be.
“At his time, Carlo made some remarks,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“I heard,” I answered.
“What did you hear?” the Blue Suit asked me.
“One person called it a bit of this and that. He rambled a bit but now and then he said things that people remembered,” I said. “Like what?” the Blue Suit asked.
“One person told me he said he was running again. That came as news since he’s been telling everyone he’s done after this term. Another person told me he heard Carlo say he was going to hand over the mayoralty to his son. That was another surprise. I’m not sure how easily something like that can be accomplished, even in Everett,” I added.
“A third person who attended told of Carlo sort of apologizing for lashing out on Election Night. I was told he apologized for losing it but that he was very upset,” I told the Blue Suit.
“Carlo apparently said everything will be OK despite the outburst threatening to get a lot of people,” I added.
“What I couldn’t understand is whether Carlo was sorry about feeling that way or he was sorry that he said it for so many people to hear and to be held against him?”
“Take it from me, Josh. He’s not sorry about anything. He wants revenge. He wants to hurt those who are against him. Carlo is do- ing the ultimate every day,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“And what is that?” I asked. “He’s being himself.”