by JJ Partridge
The last pages described his organs. Apparently, only the pancreas has been examined critically, with findings of multiple tumors, one identified as an advanced carcinoma.
I sat back. Pancreatic cancer. The dreaded cancer that came on quickly, was painful in extreme, and rarely survivable. That could explain the change in Palagi’s appearance and demeanor, his possession of painkilling opiates. His horrific cancer reminded me of the Harpy’s devouring the organs of their victims.
I reviewed the entire report once more, trying to memorize what I could for Benno’s use, before Dr. Savage returned. When he did, he said, “Through?”
“Thank you for your courtesy.” I slid the folder across the conference table toward him.
“I don’t know, frankly, what you’re trying to accomplish.”
Truth be told, I wanted to find a homicide. Can’t admit to that.
“The cancer. Was it operable?”
“If you mean could it have been surgically removed, possibly, but ill-advised. At his age, it was very likely fatal. We didn’t go far enough to test whether it had metastasized, but given the cancer’s location and size, it seems likely.”
“The OxyCodone. Could Palagi accidently ingest as much as indicated in the report, say in his apartment, then walk to the river, become unconscious, and simply … fall in?”
“This drug in the amounts ingested would make him lose motor control quickly, and he’d be unconscious within a very short period of time. Perhaps three to five minutes at the outside. He couldn’t have walked very far after ingestion. Everything would slowly stop. His heartbeat would be lowered. If he was sitting, he very likely would fall forward. If he fell forward, he could have hit his head and if at the river’s edge, rolled in.”
“I guess he could have gotten enough of the drug … legally … in view of his cancer?”
Dr. Savage’s replies became wary, perhaps even exasperated. “Mr. Temple, I know absolutely nothing about the deceased except from reading his obituary, and what little my colleague added. I don’t know the source of the drug. Technically, as our report indicated, he didn’t die of an overdose. His heart gave out, likely when in asphyxiation. The water in his lungs, even though slight, means his lungs were still working while he was in the water, when and where his heart gave out.”
He picked up the folder, shuffled its contents, signaling our interview was over. “Last year,” he said, “we had one hundred ninety deaths from overdoses of prescription drugs. More than from car accidents. On a per capita basis, Rhode Island is highest in New England for opiate deaths. We are in an epidemic. Staggering amounts of OxyCodone and hydrocodone—that’s in Vicodin—are available from legitimate sources like local pharmacies that fill thousands of dosage units each day. We have seven thousand health care providers licensed to prescribe controlled substances—doctors, dentists, nurses, even veterinarians. Corrupt doctors, negligent retail outlets, and pain centers are also to blame. And then there are stolen drugs. The technical term—it’s on our website—is opioid analgesics. Death from these far exceed overdose deaths from crack cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamines combined. The victims are often depressed and if you combine antidepressant drugs with prescription opioids, it increases the opioids’ effect. As a cancer patient, Mr. Palagi may have been taking an antidepressant as well. The brain accepts them all.”
I had a last question. “The contusion?”
“Yes?”
“Did he hit something or did something hit him?
“Difficult to tell under the circumstances, but not likely life threatening.”
“But if he was …”
“Yes,” he answered dryly, “I could speculate on a number of possibilities, none of which are, however, within the facts presented to me.”
I left Dr. Savage with thanks and took the elevator to the ground floor where the guard requested my visitor’s badge. An ambulance was backing up to the loading dock. A delivery.
I opened the Mini’s door, and it was minutes before I put the key in the ignition. The medical examiner was satisfied with accidental overdose, so why shouldn’t I be? Because I had heard the recording that rejected suicide, because Palagi carried a Beretta and a vial of OxyCodone, because of his connection to Frannie Zito and his Bentley, because, as Benno had suggested, if he committed suicide, the effete Palagi would do it in a manner consistent with his lifestyle.
Because, I didn’t want to.
40
AS I TURNED INTO our garage on East Street, my cell phone vibrated with a call from Nadie. Instead of putting the Mini in the garage, I parked it in front so as not to lose the connection. As I walked into our house, I asked her, “What mischief did you get up to last night?” The other party goers, like her, were mid-thirtyish, one single, two married, one divorced and looking.
“Well,” she gushed, “we got together at the hotel—rather too sparse by the way—and what a surprise, thanks for the flowers in the room. You are super! Lots of catching up over drinks at the martini bar downstairs, then dinner—okay—in the Lower East Side, with wine pairings. Got a little drunk at a place near Chinatown called Whiskey, and caught the last Diana Krall show at the Carlyle. Terrific! Got to bed after two.”
“No guys buzzing around?”
“Funny you say that. Diane ran into an old flame at dinner and they were a couple when we left the Carlyle. So-o-o-o, sans Diane, this morning, we had a very late lunch, and then naps. Tonight, drinks, dinner at the Chelsea Grille and Amy who lives in SoHo says we should go to a place in the Meat Packing District called the Bunker …”
“Sounds delightful …”
“But Brenda wants us to go to a tango party, a milonga, where tango professionals teach and all the men dress in black. Like a Buenos Aires club, she says. I don’t have high heels with me or the right skirt. Might have to splurge,” she laughed. “How about you?”
“Exciting! Scintillating! After Palagi’s memorial service, I was out on the town to watch the bottom slapping at Providence Roller Derby …”
“You never …!”
I explained that I was catching up on movies she wouldn’t watch with me and then ventured into no man’s, no-win land. “Heard Columbus Day is still on?”
“I suppose this calendar idea came from you. It’s so like a lawyer.” She said that without exasperation, which led me to hope that absence did make the heart grow fonder.
I heard a telephone ring and she said, “Take care, got to run, I’ll call you in the morning, love you,” and was off the phone. I smiled to myself. Gee, I didn’t get the opportunity to tell her about Benno and me at Palagi’s condo, or my visits to the homeless camp and the morgue, on this way-too-dull day without you, Nadie.
I smiled again until I thought how and when I would explain my departure for Italy tomorrow night, six days before our wedding.
I finished Ripley’s Game with a pizza delivered by Pizza Pie-er and remembering Father Pietro’s references to Palagi’s essay on the novel The Leopard, I ordered it online for my e-book reader. If Palagi admired the novel, maybe it would provide insight into his state of mind. Within a few chapters of crisp prose, insightful characterizations and philosophic asides, I began to understand how someone like Palagi born into a highly stratified Italian culture, someone who suffered from psychological isolation or dysfunction, and was a victim of a betrayal of family or societal values, might defend himself and wound his enemies, even to the last breath.
I was about to turn in, I heard an echoing thunk, as though something very heavy had been dropped from fifty feet. I almost ignored it; then, another thunk, this one with more of a metal-on-metal crunch which caused me to remember that the Mini remained parked in front of the garage on East Street. I ran downstairs, left the house, turned the corner, and stopped cold.
The garage floodlights exposed the black hump of an elephantine refuse truck, headlights off, hydraulics squealing, engine roaring, with its snow plow blade under the Mini, heaving the car on to its side with, t
his time, a thud.
I yelled, “That’s my car!” and ran down the incline, waving my arms wildly, reaching the running board on the driver’s side of the truck’s cab, banging on its door, getting my fingers on its handle. The truck pulled back, its gears grinding in reverse, brakes screeching, and then plunged forward with me clinging to the door handle for dear life, the plow blade tumbling the Mini onto its roof, blowing out its windshield and door windows in a shower of glass, its horn sounding in protest. The jolt loosened my grip, I dropped to the pavement and rolled away to avoid being run over by the behemoth as it backed away from the wreckage.
My mouth gaped, I had no voice, I staggered to my feet, trying in disbelief to get one foot in front of the other. My breath was gone—does your heart’s pumping only get louder in your brain?—when with creaking gear shifts and brake squeals, the truck lurched down deserted East Street toward downtown. If the truck’s cab or body had any identifying signage, I didn’t see it; as for a license plate, it was either missing or unreadable in the dark.
I stared at the ruin of the Mini realizing that its flattened roof meant the car was a total loss. The horn remained on full blast and I felt the scrapes and bruises on my right leg and arm picked up in my fall. Slowly, I grasped the thought that this wasn’t some random act of violence. A refuse truck with a lowered snowplow blade running amuck on the streets of Providence in October? This was payback.
I went inside to call 911 and was answered by a recording asking for English or Spanish, stating my call was important, and to stay on the line for the next available dispatcher. It took two minutes. When I got a human being, the incident sounded strange in its telling. After I repeated that I wasn’t injured, the dispatcher told me to call the Providence police and gave me a phone number. I followed instructions, twice explained what had happened to the police operator and was told to stay put until a patrol car arrived.
I went back to the wreckage and took photographs with my cell phone camera until a patrol car came down East Street, its strobe lights flashing off houses and stone walls and the wreckage. A muscular looking young cop brandishing both a night stick and a long black flashlight left the cruiser, checked out the flattened Mini from all angles to make sure no one was inside, put his head under the popped hood, yanked at a wire, and shut off the horn. All the while, I urged him to send out a stop-on-sight bulletin for a black refuse truck with a snow blade.
He ignored me and called his dispatcher as neighbors ventured out to view the commotion. A tow truck from East Side Service Center then arrived, its bank of spinning yellow lights adding to the garish show, followed by a second patrol car driven by the precinct patrol sergeant whose chest nameplate read Spinelli. I repeated a demand for a stop-on-sight order and got nowhere. I shouted, “The goddamn truck could be in a garage in Pawtucket by now!” as a larger tow truck with more yellow lights flashing rumbled in off Congdon Street. While Spinelli spoke with the patrol cop, the tow drivers found a way to wrap cables around the Mini’s carcass, the truck’s winch groaned and screeched as the squashed-like-a-bug car was dragged up steel treads into its bay. Goodbye, Mini.
Spinelli took down my name and address, time of incident, where I was, truck description, noted my Carter University connection—that from the parking sticker on the Mini’s bumper—and I answered cop questions like ‘you got insurance?’, ‘you didn’t see the face of the driver?’ and ‘didn’t get a license plate?’ My answers were noted as I repeated my request for a ‘stop on sight’ order for the refuse truck. He gave me a ‘I know what I’m doin’’ look and returned to his cruiser without an answer.
Benno had been spot on. Frannie Zito had escalated our situation. The Mini was the perfect target since I had called attention to it before the wild ride in the Bentley.
I poured a glass of Jameson, sat in our rarely used living room, and wondered what else I could expect from Zito, coming to grips with issues like Nadie’s safety while I was in Italy, when my cell phone buzzed. “What the hell happened?” Chief Tuttle monitored the police radio on weekends.
“A refuse truck, no lights, no name, using its plow, flipped my car over on its roof. A complete loss.”
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t know.”
“Bullshit!”
“Really, no idea!” A shameless lie.
“Yeah?” Tuttle replied in a voice that reeked with disbelief. “You get on the wrong side of something? Columbus Day? Shoot-Out?”
“I assume that you’ve got your guys looking for a refuse truck with a snow plow …”
“It’s Saturday night. Normal patrols. If a refuse truck is spotted, we’ll stop it.”
“Great, I feel so much better.”
“Cut the snide remarks. We’ll do what we can. Come in and file a complaint.”
“I’m not.”
“You got to file a complaint.”
“Can’t.
“Why?”
Had to think about that. “Believe me, it’s better this way. An accident. I’ll report it to the insurance company.”
“Because …?”
“Something personal got out of hand.”
“Shoot-Out or Columbus Day?”
“Could I ask you for something?”
“What?”
“Could you stick a patrol car on Congdon Street here for a couple of nights. My fiancée is here alone when I’m away Sunday to Thursday in Italy, and …”
“Not unless you tell me what’s going on.”
How would the tough cop, the straight arrow, react? With no alternative, I told him of the confrontation in Zito’s Bentley, but didn’t mention Young Jimmy’s connection.
“I warned you about Zito,” he said sternly and paused. “Okay, you’ll get your surveillance. Better yet, suggest your fiancée spend the nights someplace else. Call Bacigalupi. This time, take his advice.”
After anxious minutes, I have my hands on my jacket. The blessed cell phone is in the pocket. I quickly punch in Benno’s cell number. He answers with, “Where are you?”
“Where am I? Where the hell are you? You’re supposed to keep me covered!”
“You were supposed to wait for me!” he retorts.
“You couldn’t follow two cars?”
He let seconds go by.
“I … got pulled over,” he replies sheepishly. “On Allens Avenue. Took five minutes to straighten out.”
“I’m at the dump.”
“The dump?”
“In the trunk of my car.”
“What!”
“How well do you know the area?”
“I grew up in Knightsville two miles away.”
“Go down Shun Pike, go over the hill and I’m someplace on the downslope, a dirt side road before the end. Keys are on the front seat.”
“Who?”
“Just get here.”
“Fifteen minutes. Just hold on for fifteen minutes. I’ll be there.”
41 Sunday
For me, sleep never solved any problem or answered questions. I woke as angry with myself as when I went to bed. In my stubbornness, I had jerked around a bad guy to the point of revenge. I screwed up. I have to thank my ego and inability to forget an insult. Maybe in addition to the language, I had picked up other Italian traits.
I brewed a double espresso and went to the basement to exercise vigorously on the NordicTrack, determined to puzzle out what to do about Zito, short of raising my arms in surrender.
Benno phoned after I showered and dressed. “I told you.”
“I know.”
“You hired me for Palagi, not for protection from Zito and Scuiglie.”
“I know.”
“You could end up in a wooden tuxedo if this goes on.”
“I know.”
“This is for free. I spent years dealing with the Hill guys. I got to know the ‘old fellas,’ the guys who had their own code. Used to be I’d go riding by one of their haunts, I’d even get a wave from some of them. Because we
knew what we were doing, what our jobs were. They were going to break every law, I’d spend every day trying to catch them. But, these gangbangers? Zito is important to them because he can wash their money by making loans. If it’s Zito, and it has to be, he’ll stop only if somebody inside and tight tells him that he can’t hit on you again.”
“Who’s that?”
He ignored my question. “This is what I can do. I can get the word out to that somebody that it’s over. You forget finding that dump truck, file your insurance claim, concentrate on everything else that’s going on, and stay out of Zito’s face.”
“You mean apologize?”
“No, just keep your yap shut.”
In the scale of things, Nadie’s safety was paramount. I agreed.
He changed subjects without warning. “Our contact is Gianmarco Barracelli, second cousin on my mother’s side. Lives in Bari, in the import-export business, olive oil, wine, cheese, anything, and everything else, that moves. A long time ago, I was able to help out his wife’s nephew who got into a scrape in Boston. DA decided that the nephew would do better at home than spending any more time here, if you get my meaning.” I did.
“Anyway, Gianmarco’s made calls today, located a cousin of Maria Ruggieri, and is getting some approvals. That’s the way it has to be, he says, and he should know.” Benno also said he had reviewed Palagi’s bank statements and found that cash had been flowing out for a decade. “Constantly wiring out to accounts in Italy, three thousand here, twenty-five hundred there. Gambling, boys, what?”
I told him what I learned at the medical examiner’s office from Palagi’s charts. All he said was, “That’s a bad cancer.”
I thanked him for his success with his contacts in Italy and he replied, “Do me one favor. Never use the word ‘Ndrangheta’ when we are in Italy. Friend, amici, will do.”