Secondhand Smoke

by Karen E. Olson

  I heard a clicking behind me. Wesley Bell’s face was covered by a camera aimed at me.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” I hissed.

  The camera fell to his chest, and Wesley’s eyes were wide. “We won’t use it,” he promised, but I knew better. Maybe it wouldn’t get in the paper on purpose, but some asshole with a lame sense of humor might decide it was the only picture that illustrated the crime scene.

  I shook my head. “You know better than that,” I said condescendingly, and waved him off. I watched as he shrugged and disappeared behind the back of the building. I had to talk to Dick quickly and get the hell out of there. I turned to him.

  “Marty says I have to give you some quotes and tell you what happened,” I said flatly. In an equally monotone voice, I told Dick everything I’d told Tom. I threw in some more details about the dead chickens; Marty would like that. “Marty says I can read it when you’re done,” I added.

  Dick frowned. Like he had a right to object. But before he could say anything, I was standing face-to-face with Immaculata Amato, now most certainly a widow.

  “They tell me you and Vincent found him.” Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but her voice was harsh, and I sensed something in her tone that seemed to accuse me of causing Sal’s untimely demise. “You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you.”

  I saw that in her grief she was lashing out at me—I was the obvious choice—and braced myself for more, but Vinny stepped in between us.

  “It’s a good thing she found him, Mac,” he said. “Otherwise he would’ve been chewed up by the bulldozer that’s coming to level the place.” Not a pretty image, but it was accurate.

  I wanted to know where the animosity was coming from. It wasn’t my damn fault that Prego burned down, that Sal went missing and now was found dead.

  Movement caught my eye, and Pete Amato came up next to his mother. He ran a hand through his thick hair, then stared at me. “Why are you always around?”

  “I’m just doing my job,” I said. “You know, I cared about Sal, too.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it,” Pete growled.

  “You really don’t have any reason to talk to her like that,” Vinny said.

  A shadow moved across the snow, and my father stood silently by my side. Pete’s scowl wavered a little.

  I wanted to get out of there. But before I did, I wanted to ask some questions. I mean, they hated me anyway—it couldn’t get much worse.

  “So did either of you know that Sal was in the neighborhood? I can’t imagine that someone didn’t see him over here.”

  “Did you see him?” Pete asked. “You live across the square. If one of us could see him, then you could, too, right?”

  “He wouldn’t exactly seek me out, but he might go home,” I said, feeling my face grow hot.

  Pete leaned over and whispered something to his mother, who held tightly to his arm but didn’t look at me. “I can’t have you disturbing my mother,” he said, and paused. “First LeeAnn and now my father. Maybe you should be questioning Mickey Hayward.”

  “He’s in jail. He couldn’t possibly have killed Sal,” I pointed out, ignoring his remark about disturbing Mac. She’d disturbed me, but who the hell was keeping score?

  “How do I know you didn’t kill him?” Pete glared at me.

  My father stepped forward, his expression calm. “Now, Pete, don’t overreact.” His voice was soft, smooth.

  Vinny was nodding. “And if you keep talking to Annie like that, I’ll have to do something about it.”

  “What do you think you can do?” Pete’s voice was ugly, but he glanced nervously at my father before looking back at Vinny.

  “Remember Malone’s?” Vinny asked.

  Pete stiffened. “You’re all talk,” he said, but I was surprised to hear a tinge of fear in his voice. I stared at Vinny with a little more respect. Malone’s used to be a bar on State Street, and I would have to ask Vinny what happened there so that Pete, who was a few inches taller and more than a few pounds heavier than Vinny, would be concerned about his well-being.

  My father smiled at Pete. “Why don’t you and I help your mother back to the house? I think she needs you now.” In one move, he put his hand on Pete’s back, the other under Mac’s elbow, and steered them toward their house. They had no time to refuse.

  “He’s good,” Vinny said softly.

  I nodded. My father always knew the right thing to say and do. I’d always thought he should get into politics. He and my mother would’ve given Bill and Hillary a run for their money.

  “I have to get going. I need to get to work.” I glanced around for Dick, but he’d vanished.

  “I’ll drive you,” Vinny said.

  “I’m okay.”

  Vinny smiled sadly. “No, you’re not.”

  Vinny took my arm and led me catty-corner on the square to his Ford Explorer.

  “So what happened at Malone’s?” I asked as soon as we were both strapped in. I looked around the SUV. It was just as neat as his apartment, which I’d had the opportunity to survey a couple of months ago. Not a scrap of paper, not a soda can in sight.

  “Nothing.” Vinny turned the key and the engine started to purr, reminding me that my own Honda Accord had some sort of knocking noise that might need some attention from a mechanic in the near future.

  “Hey, come on. You can tell me.”

  He cocked his head and winked at me. “And you won’t tell anyone, right?”

  He had me there. My job was to tell things to the world. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t keep a secret. I told him as much.

  “Okay, okay.” He let the engine run while we sat there, waiting for the SUV to warm up. “It was a few years ago. I was in Malone’s playing pool with Mickey Hayward.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and he grinned. “I have friends, and Mick’s one of them. He’s not a bad guy.”

  I nodded. “Go on.”

  “LeeAnn was there, at the bar. She was flirting with the bartender, which Mickey wasn’t too happy about, but he didn’t say much about it. We kept playing pool.” Vinny’s voice got quieter, and he stared out the windshield at nothing in particular as he remembered. “Pete Amato came in, he was drunker than hell, and he went over to LeeAnn. She started flirting with him, too. You know the way she was.”

  He didn’t need me to say anything. We all knew LeeAnn.

  “Anyway, Pete started getting a little too physical with her. He kissed her, right there in the bar, right in front of Mickey, who couldn’t get there fast enough to beat the shit out of him. I was closer, and Pete thought he was swinging at Mickey, but he managed to get me in the eye.” Vinny rubbed his right eye absently. “Hurt like a son of a bitch, and since I’d had a few beers, I swung back.” He paused and turned to look at me. “I’m not a violent guy, not really, but Pete came at me with a beer bottle. I don’t know where it came from, but it was there, and I had to do something about it. I took some boxing lessons in college and learned how to fight, so I did. But that beer bottle kept coming at me from all angles.”

  He stopped suddenly, and I took a deep breath, holding it until he started again.

  “I pulled out my gun. I had it under my jacket, I’d just come off a situation at work where I’d thought I would need it, and I pulled it out and pointed it at Pete and told him to fucking drop the bottle.” I could see Vinny reliving it as he spoke, and I didn’t move.

  Vinny dropped his eyes. “Scared the shit out of Pete, and he dropped the bottle. I guess he never thought I would do something like that.” He looked at me. “When he dropped it, I put the gun away, but he knew if he’d pushed me, I would’ve used it. I would’ve gone as far as I had to.”

  We sat for a minute without speaking. “So I guess he knows that if he keeps at me, you’ll really do something about it,” I finally said.

  He shrugged and looked at me sheepishly. “Stupid, huh?”

  “What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? Wouldn’t he k
now Mickey would’ve probably killed him for that? He got off lucky with it being you. Especially since Mickey carries around that bag full of knives with him everywhere.” Everyone knew about Mickey’s bag of chef’s knives. He loved his knives, and he loved carving up shit with them. He wouldn’t have stopped himself from carving up Pete Amato for kissing his wife. “And what’s with kissing LeeAnn?”

  Vinny laughed. “Pete’s a bad drunk.” But I could see he was still thinking about his own actions.

  “I don’t blame you for doing what you did,” I said. “You thought your life was in danger. You protected yourself.” I didn’t want to tell him that I was a little shocked with the story. He used to be a marine biologist and studied whales for a while until the program’s funding was cut. He went to work for a friend of his father’s who was a private detective and managed to get his own license. But even though I knew what he did for a living, I’d certainly never seen him violent with anyone.

  “What did LeeAnn do?” I asked after the SUV started moving.

  “When?”

  “After the fight.”

  He smiled, more to himself than to me. “Oh, she got on my case for being an asshole and scaring the shit out of everyone in the bar.” He paused. “And then she and Mickey went home.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went in the men’s room and threw up.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did too. I was drunker than I thought.”

  We were quiet the rest of the way to the paper. I mulled over this latest information about Vinny, a story I never would’ve believed if someone else had told it. But it reeked of truth, especially the vomiting part. He wouldn’t have ever told me that if it hadn’t really happened.

  We pulled into the visitors’ parking lot, and when the Explorer stopped, I opened my door.

  He opened his at the same time.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I’m going to come in and wait until you’re done. Then I’ll drive you back home.”

  “You are not my bodyguard.”

  “I am today. You’re stuck with me.” He followed me up the steps.

  I swiped my card key through the thing by the door, and Vinny opened the door when we heard the buzz. I wasn’t going to get rid of him, and this was going to be incredibly embarrassing.

  The newsroom was hardly busy, since we only had skeleton crews on Saturdays, and this one was a holiday weekend to boot. Kevin Prisley was on the phone, and Renee Chittenden was pondering which Munchkin to eat from the box on top of the file cabinet near the wall. That’s where we put all the communal food. There would be more later, when the copy editors came in with their chips and salsas and brownies and cookies. Occasionally raw vegetables would make an appearance, but only if someone was on a diet.

  Even though he normally didn’t work weekends, Marty was there. It was because of Sal and LeeAnn—he didn’t trust the other editors on these stories, wanted to see them first, get them into shape before the copy editors got their hands on them later in the afternoon.

  Dick was there, too, back from the crime scene and writing up the story.

  I peeled off my coat, because now the newsroom was hotter than Hades. “Guess they fixed the heat,” I said.

  Marty and Dick looked up at the same time; Marty’s shirtsleeves were rolled up, and sweat beaded his forehead.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Marty said. “Maintenance guys aren’t around this weekend.” He glanced questioningly at Vinny.

  “This is Vinny DeLucia,” I said. “He’s just going to hang out while I check Dick’s story.”

  Just my luck, Henry Owens was filling in for the regular weekend metro editor, who was basking on some beach in the Caribbean. I didn’t bother introducing him to Vinny. I didn’t want everyone getting too friendly.

  I pulled a chair over from Renee Chittenden’s desk—she was nibbling on a Munchkin while talking to Kevin, who was off the phone now—and put it on the other side of my computer terminal, indicating Vinny should sit there. This was way too weird for me. While it was okay to have Vinny in my apartment and run into him at crime scenes and on the streets, it didn’t feel okay to have him in my work space. And considering what a neat freak he was, I was more than aware of the stack of newspapers under my desk and the pile of old press releases that spilled across the top of the desk. Not to mention the clutter on my computer terminal: Old comic strips were taped to the sides, along with a postcard-size magazine photo of Frank Sinatra that seemed even larger as Vinny checked it out, his lips curling into a small smile. Stripped across the top of the terminal were two headline clips: IT COULD HAPPEN ANYWHERE and FIRE SUSPECTED AS ARSON GUTS BUILDING. It was too bad the new flat screens hadn’t been installed yet; there was just too much room on these behemoths to fill up with shit.

  And I had forgotten about my screen saver. Someone had sat here weeks ago and as a joke decided that I had to have a full-screen mug shot of Karl Rove. The joke was that I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it, so every day I got to stare at all the pores in his face as I booted up the computer.

  “Where’s the story?” I asked Dick, who was still typing across the desk from me, although he kept checking out Vinny beside me. “Just ignore him, pretend he’s not here,” I advised.

  “Hey, Vinny.” Dick’s smile spread from ear to ear.

  “Hi, Dick. Good story, huh?” Okay, now Vinny was getting downright chummy.

  Dick’s eyes went from Vinny to me. “I’m almost done. It’s in my queue.”

  I didn’t wait for him to finish, I just pulled up the story on a read-only and scanned his words. As usual, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the lead, which was about fifty words too long. My fingers itched to get into the copy, to give it my own tweak.

  “It’s Dick’s story, Annie.” Marty had come up behind me and was reading over my shoulder. But he gave me a wink that told me he’d take care of it. It would be readable by the time it got into the paper.

  I got down to my quotes, which were fairly simple: “I stepped into the rubble and Sal Amato was in front of me.” Then some stuff from the cops. “There were three dead chickens.” And then some more stuff from the cops.

  “Why the hell were there dead chickens there?” Marty muttered as he read.

  I sighed. “Seems Sal was running a gambling operation using chickens that play tic-tac-toe.”

  Marty snorted. “Gimme a break, Annie. Really, what’s the story?”

  “Apparently it was going on for years in the basement at Prego. Lots of money, lots of high rollers, lots of degenerate gamblers. I’ve got it on a good source.”

  Marty stole a glance at Vinny.

  Dick stirred. “But how can chickens play tic-tac-toe?”

  “Guess they’re in Atlantic City and Vegas and have been in Chinatown for a long time. Not to mention the Pennsylvania fair circuit.” I’d done a little research on the Internet while waiting for callbacks. I’d seen the stories about the chickens that got kidnapped from a fair a few years back. They were never recovered. Probably ended up on someone’s barbecue plate.

  “We need this on the record,” Marty said. “This is a helluva story.”

  “I don’t know if anyone will talk about it,” I said. “I found out some stuff about Sal’s operation.” I paused. “The Mob is involved.”

  Marty just stared at me.

  “New York, New England, guess Sal was paying protection,” I said to break up the silence.

  “How long have you known about this?” Marty asked, drawing his words out slowly.

  “Not long. Really.”

  Marty looked at Vinny again, and he knew that Vinny was my source. But from the look on Vinny’s face, he guessed right that Vinny wasn’t going to go on the record with shit. He bit his lip. “The FBI was there, at the fire. They know what’s going on. You’re going to have to get Jeff Parker to tell you on the record.”

  I couldn’t stifle a snort. “Come on,
Marty, that’s a big order.”

  “Maybe you should call your source, then.”

  Paula. It would add to the story if we could include the gambling operation. But she didn’t answer her cell. I left a message but wasn’t optimistic about getting a callback, considering her reactions when I’d talked to her before.

  Marty was disappointed but told me I had to keep trying. “We’ve still got time. When you know anything, you have to let me know.”

  I nodded and finished reading the story. “It’s okay,” I said with a sense of loss. Dick was hopping up and down like a rabbit.

  “Really? You really think so?”

  It was pathetic. He was pathetic. It was bad enough that I lost my story, but having to pump up Dick’s ego was more than I could handle.

  But before I could say anything, Dick’s eyes strayed past me, his lips curling in an odd way. I turned to see what was distracting him and looked right into Cindy Purcell’s breasts. She was wearing four-inch heels, “fuck me” shoes, if I remembered the phrase right, and I must have, because Dick was drooling.

  “Oh, hello,” she said to me, but looking at Dick in the same gross way he was looking at her.

  My God, I had to get the hell out of here or I’d throw up all over my own desk. I looked over at Vinny, who was watching the whole show. In fact, everyone in the vicinity was watching it—and me, to see my reaction.

  “This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever experienced firsthand,” I whispered to Vinny.

  “I think they’re cute,” he said, his lips twitching.

  “You do not.”

  “You’re just pissed because he didn’t pick you.”

  Now I really was going to be sick, and I punched him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”

  He was going to bust a gut if he didn’t let himself laugh.

  Renee Chittenden sauntered over and sat on the edge of my desk. “What’s wrong with her?” she whispered.

  I raised my eyebrows at Vinny. “See? It’s not just me.”

  Their bodies were too close together, their faces inches apart. Dick’s was bright red, and Cindy was laughing.